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BETTY’S 


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BETTY’S Visions 

AND 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS 



' RHODA BROUGHTON 

AUTHOR OF “nancy,” “ COMETH UP AS A FLOWER,” ETC, , 



t No, . - 

WASH\^ 


/ 


.NEW YORK 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 
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RHODA BROUGHTON’S WORKS 

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V • 


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i 


CONTENTS. 


EETTY’S VISIONS. 

HER FIRST VISION . • • 
HER SECOND VISION - • . 
HER THIRD VISION ... 
HER FOURTH VISION - • • 

HER FIFTH AND LAST VISION - 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


SCENE I. 
SCENE II. 
SCENE III. 





f’ ; 


PAGE. 

5 

20 

36 

61 

78 


92 

114 

I3<J 


POSTSCRIPT 





BETTY’S VISIONS. 


HER FIRST VISION. 

I CAN see nothing unnatural about 
her !” says the mother, with an aggrieved 
accent on the adjective. “She is a re- 
markably nice child, if that is unnatural. 
Everyone says she is a remarkably nice 
child, everyone but you.** 

“ Did I say that she was not a re- 
markably nice child T retorts he, nettled ; 
“ should I be likely to say that my own 
child was not a nice child V 

“You said that she was unnatural^ 


B 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 




what more could you have said of her if 
she had had two heads 

‘‘How you harp upon a mere word !” 
replies he, crossly, “ if I said unnatural, 
I onlv meant thu rjhe ’^as not lik^ ^ther 
chiliirc/. i 

1 1 , as I incline to think, since 
Rachel’s arrival, to be like other children 
means to be voracious, idle, and uncivil, 
I am not sorry she is unlike other chil- 
dren.” 

Perhaps because he feels that he is 
getting the worst of it, Mr. Brewster 
declines into silence, and walking to the 
window, stands there, whistling sub- 
duedly, and watching the object of 
dispute and her cousin Rachel, both at 
present visible upon the lawn. But, 
though they are both in the same place, 
their occupations are dissimilar. Rachel, 
seated in the fork of the mulberry tree, 
to which she had hoydenishly climbed, is 
gnawing an unripe apple, rud«iy snatched, 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


r 


half-eaten, from one of the boys ; while 
little Betty, the daughter of the house, is 
soberly walking over the sward beside a 
stout, middle-aged gentleman, one of 
whose hands she is quietly caressing 
with both hers. 

** Uncommonly fond little Miss of her 
uncle !” resumed Mr. Brewster, presently, 
in a not very complacent tone ; ‘‘I never 
heard of any child being so fond of an 
uncle. I am sure I was not when I 
was a boy. I remember ©ne of mine 
giving me a precious good licking be- 
cause I filled his top-boots with cold 
water !” 

‘‘And richly you deserved it!” retorts 
his wife. 

“ But as to Miss Betty,” continued he. 

** Miss Betty is a very amiable child,” 
interrupts Mrs. Brewster, with a not 
altogether amiable accent on her daugh- 
ter’s name. 

“ I never said she was not,” rejoins 


8 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


he, with a testiness born of the implied 
slur upon the amiability of his own 
infancy. *‘A11 I say is that there is 
something un 

“Natural, he is going to add ; but, 
bethinking himself in time how gravely 
displeasing the expression is to his wife, 
he pulls himself up. Perhaps she is 
grateful to him for his self-control. 
Perhaps the various little shafts she has 
winged at him have eased her spleen, 
for she says presently, in a far better 
humoured voice — 

“ She is uncommonly fond of him ; of 
course he is a very good fellow, being 
your brother” (with a little malicious 
laugh) ; “ how could he help being } 
But I confess I cannot see his attraction. 
I really do not know,” she adds, 
thoughtfully, “ how I shall break to 
the child that he is going on Tues- 
day.” 

“ Whatever you do, do not put it off 


BETTY^S VISIONS. 


9 


till the last moment,” says he, hastily, 
‘‘or we shall be having a scene.” 

“ She never makes scenes,” replies 
Mrs. Brewster, coldly. 

“ I wish she did ; she would not 
feel things so deeply if she made 
scenes.” 

“ Well, as he is only going for a fort- 
night to Maidenhead,” returns Betty’s 
father, with a short laugh, “ in my 
humble opinion it will be rather a waste 
of deep feeling in this case ; it is like the 
parson who preached from the text 
‘ Knowing well that they should see his 
face no more,’ and took an affecting fare- 
well of his congregation when he was 
only going by penny boat down to 
Margate.” 

“You must remember that to a child 
a fortnight is as long as two years would 
be to old people like you and me,” 
replies his wife, passing by with grave 
contempt the dubious facetiousness of 


lO 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


her husband’s illustration ; and as she 
speaks she leaves the room. 

The dreaded Tuesday has come. 
The carriage that bears away the be- 
loved Uncle John has driven from the 
door. The whole family — gathered to 
bid him God speed on the door-step — 
have again dispersed to their various 
avocations. Rachel, having pumped up 
a few noisy and unnecessary tears — tears 
speedily dried by half a dozen cobnuts 
thrust into her hand by the warmest- 
hearted of the boys — has gone off 
rabbiting with the latter, forgetful and 
elate ; a bag of ferrets in her lily hand. 
Betty, who, on the contrary, has not cried 
at all, remains rooted to the doorstep, 
silent and still ; her eyes fastened to the 
spot where the departing vehicle had 
last blessed her sight. 

Why, in Heaven’s name, if she is so 
cut up, cannot she cry ?” says Mr. 
Brewster to his wife, as they saunter 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


II 


away together towards the garden. ‘Ml 
Rachel or the boys are m trouble, one 
cannot hear oneself speak ror the noise 
of their sorrow ; I do not care what you 
say, there is something unna ” 

The forbidden word dies hah spoken 
on his lips. 

“ She will get over it, ’ replies the 
mother, throwing back a compassionate 
look at the disconsolate little figure still 
rooted to the doorstep; “she will out- 
grow it. I believe that I was a very 
odd child, and you must own” — (laugh- 
ing) — “ that there is nothing very odd 
about me now.” 

Five days have passed. “July, as 
Horace Walpole said, “has set in with 
its usual severity.” After a briei spell of 
tantalising sunshine, just to show what 

weather can and ought to be, shire 

has relapsed into its normal state of drip, 
drip. It has poured all day. All day 
the rooms have rung with the din of the 


52 


BETTY^S 'VISIONS. 


bored and house-bound children. From 
the schoolroom have Issued nolsesome 
smells of amateur cooking ; squeals as of 
a pinched Rachel ; yells, as of retallated- 
upon boys ; yelps of trodden-on dogs ; 
Bob’s voice ; Bill’s voice ; Geoffrey’s 
voice ; highest, shrillest of all, Rachel’s 
voice. But among all the voices, there 
is not to be detected one tone of little 
Betty’s. She is not even with them ; is 
not even playing her usual part of meek 
soiiffre do2ileur. All through the rainy 
day she has sat alone In a disused attic, 
often haunted by her, sat among old 
trunks and family pictures that have had 
their day, and now live with their pale 
faces to the wall ; has sat watching those 
cunning mathematicians, the spiders, 
spin their nice webs ; and the ittle 
nervous mice dart noiselessly In and out 
of their wainscot homes. It has grown 
dark now ; too dark, one would think, 
even for the spiders to see to weave 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


13 


their webs, but perhaps they do not need 
sight. Perhaps they go on weaving, 
weaving all through the night. Mrs. 
Brewster is sitting in her boudoir. Her 
husband is dining out, and she is alone. 
It is not an evening on which one would 
choose to be alone ; an evening on 
which the wet tree boughs slap the 
window, and the rain comes sometimes 
even down the chimney ; making the fire 
spit and fizz. It is the sort of evening 
on which, looking out into the straining 
dusk, one might expect to see a Ban- 
shee’s weird face pressed against the 
pane. Some such nervous thought as 
this has prompted Mrs. Brewster to 
stretch out her hand to the bell, to ring 
for the servant to draw the curtains, 
when the door noiselessly opens, and her 
little daughter enters. 

“ Betty !” cries the mother, in a cross 
tone, for there is something ghostly 
and that harmonizes with her vague 


14 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


fears, in the child’s soundless mode of 
entry, “not in bed yet.^ It is nine 
o’clock ! What do you mean ?” 

Betty makes no answer. She has 
silently advanc ^d out of the shadows 
that enwrap the further end of the room, 
into the little radius of red light diffused 
by the wood fire. 

“ What is the matter with you ? Why 
do you not speak ?” cries Mrs. Brewster, 
irritably. The child is beside her now, 
and her eyes are lifted to her mother’s ; 
and yet the latter feels that they are 
somehow not looking at her, but, as it 
were, at some object beyond her. 

“ What is the matter with you ?” 
repeats she, with growing nervous ill- 
humour, shaking the little girl by the 
shoulder. 

Then Betty speaks. “Uncle John 
is dead !” she says, in a level, dream- 
ing voice. “ I know it ; he touched 
me on the shoulder as he passed by.” 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


*5 


“ What nonsense are you talking 
cries Mrs. Brewster, angrily. “ How 
can Uncle John have touched you when 
he is a hundred and twenty miles away ? 
What do you mean by telling such a 
silly falsehood ?” 

The child does not answer. She 
neither retracts nor re-asserts her state- 
ment. She only stands perfectly still, 
with that odd, unseeing look in her eyes. 

'‘If you do not know how to behave 
more rationally you had better go to 
bed,” says the mother, displeased and 
frightened — she scarcely knows at what 
— and noiselessly and still, as if in a 
dream, Betty obeys. 

The morning has come, and it and 
the sunshine it has brought with it, have 
dispersed and routed the eerie terrors of 
the night. 

Sitting in her light and cheerful 
boudoir, Mrs. Brewster has forgotten with 
how creepy a feeling she had looked in- 


l6 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


to its dark corner over night. She has 
forgotten also Betty’s strange speech, 
and her own ire at it. She is smiling to 
herself at the recollection of some little 
whimsical incident of his dinner party, 
retailed to her by her husband, when 
that husband enters. 

“ A telegram ? ” says she, seeing a 
flimsy pink paper in his hand. “ From 
whom ? No bad news, I hope ?” She 
says it without violent emotion, all that 
the world holds of great importance to 
her being safely housed within the same 
walls as she. 

Mr. Brewster does not answer. 

** From John, I suppose ?” suggests 
she, calmly. He is coming back 
sooner than he intended.” 

Then, surprised at his silence and look- 
ing up for the first time into his face — 
Good heavens, what is it 

For all answer he puts the paper into 
her hand, and her eye in an instant has 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


*7 


drunk Its contents. ‘‘ From Mr. Smith, 
Skindle’s Hotel, Maidenhead. To Mr. 

Brewster, Taplington Grange, shire. 

Accident on the river last night. Col. 
B re wster drowned. B ody j us t recovered. 
Come at once.” 

Mrs. Brewster has turned very pale ; 
but at such news a change of colour is 
not surprising. 

“ Last night !” she says, Betty's speech 
flashing suddenly back upon her mind. 

“ What time last night ? It does not 
say what time.” 

“ What does the exact time matter ?” 
replies he, gruffly ; turning away his head 
with an Englishman’s unconquerable 
aversion from being seen, even by a wife, 
under the influence of any emotion. He 
had liked his brother ; and is thinking of 
the time when they were * little boys 
together. 

“It does matter !” she cries, excitedly, 
“ It does ! it does 1” 


i8 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


But he has left the room to give hasty 
directions relative to his departure, which 
immediately follows. On the next day 
he returns, bringing with him his brother’s 
body, and such details of the catastrophe 
that had caused that brother’s death, as 
are ever likely to be arrived at. Upon 
that ill-starred evening, the weather at 

Maidenhead, unlike that in shire, 

had been fine, and Colonel Brewster 
had, according to his frequent habit after 
dinner, taken a boat and sculled himself 
on the river. He had not returned at 
his usual hour, which excited some slight 
surprise at the hotel, but not much alarm 
was felt until early on the ensuing morn- 
ing, when his hat was brought in by a 
countryman, who had found it near the 
bank of the river, and had also seen a 
skiff floating, keel uppermost, further out 
in the stream. Drags were immediately 
procured, and after half an hour’s search 
the body was discovered half a mile 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


19 


lower down the river in a bed of rushes. 
By what accident the boat had capsized, 
and its occupant, an excellent s,wimmer, 
lost his life, will probably never be 
known. Only the fact remains, that on 
the evening of his death his niece, at 
the distance of one hundred and twenty 
miles away, had become aware of its 
having taken place. She expressed no 
surprise at the news, nor ever revealed, 
further than by that one sentence, how 
she had become apprised of it This 
was her First Vkion. 


HER SECOND VISION. 


Time has been galloping away. It has 
begun to gallop even with Betty ; for 
she is grown up. At eighteen, time 
gallops, though not violently ; at thirty- 
eight, it outstrips an express train ; and 
at fifty-eight it leaves the electric tele- 
graph behind it. Betty is eighteen, 
and full - grown. No longer is she 
measured, with heels together and chin 
tucked in, against the school-room door ; 
since, for the last year, she has continued 
stationary at that final inch in the paint ; 
which proclaims that her height is to 
remain at five feet five inches until, that 
is, the epoch, which arrives sooner than 
we expect it, when she will begin to 
grow down again. She has developed 
into a demure, pale comeliness ; and no 


21 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


one any longer thinks her odd. Her 
father no longer considers her as 
unnatural ; and his altercations with 
her mother on the subject of her 
(Betty’s) eccentricities have long died 
into silence. At eighteen, there 
is nothing eccentric in being in- 
different to dolls, and averse from 
ferrets ; in speaking with a soft voice, 
and liking rather to walk than to run, 
in seeking solitude, and being able to 
look at a loaded apple tree without any 
desire to swarm up it. With the good 
word of many, and the ill word of few, 
Betty takes her still course along life’s 
path ; a little thrown into the shade, 
perhaps, by her cousin Rachel, who has 
shot up into a very fine young woman — • 
a splendid young female athlete, whose 
achievements in hunting - field, or on 
frozen river, in ball - room, or on 
tennis-ground, are admired by all the 
country side, and in the wake of whose 

c 


22 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


glories Betty follows with distant, un- 
envying humility. 

It is a winter evening, crisp and stilly 
cold, and in the once school-room now 
elevated and transmogrified by the aid of 
a clean paper and a few girlish gim- 
cracks into a grown-up sitting - room, 
are the cousins. They are standing 
side by side at the window, having 
pulled back the curtain, and are look- 
ing out, as well as the hard frost- 
flowers on the pane will let them, at 
the moon-ennobled snow. 

''You will have a moon I” says 
Betty. 

" At this time to-morrow, as nearly 
as possible, I shall be getting there,” 
rejoins Rachel, with a sort of dance in 
her voice. “ I wish they had asked 
you too.” 

" I do not think that I do,” says 
Betty, reflectively ; letting her finger 
travel slowly down the window, in 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


23 


the effort — a vain one, since they are 
on the other side of the glass — to 
reach the airy frost traceries. “I do 
not think that I enjoy things much 
at first hand. When you come back 
and describe them they sound en- 
trancing !” 

“I do not see how this visit can 
help being entrancing !” cries Rachel, 
pursuing her own joyous anticipations- 

“ And yet visits do help it,” answers 
Betty, with gentle cynicism. 

“Two balls and a play! Skating if 
it freezes ; hunting if it thaws I” con- 
tinues Rachel, triumphantly ; checking 
off on her fingers her promised 
pleasures. I cannot think why they 
did not ask you 1” 

“ I can,” replies Betty, with a 
grave smile, “since they could get 
the plums without the dough, they 
were quite wise to do so ; but,” 
(with a change of tone to a wistful 


24 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


intonation) ‘‘ however delightful they 
may be, you will come home for 
Christmas ?” 

“ By the number of times you have 
asked me that question it is evident 
that you think I shall not,” answers 
Rachel, with a good - humoured im- 
patience. 

“ There is nobody cheers up mother 
in the way you do,” pursues Betty, 
leaning her elbow on the sill and 
looking pensively out at the steely 
December stars. “If one wanted a 
proof, which one does not, of what 
a melancholy world this is, one would 
have it in the fact of the extreme 
gratitude that people feel for mere 
animal spirits in anyone.” 

“ Mere animal spirits ! ” repeats 
Rachel, laughing lightly, “thank you 
for the compliment.” 

“ I really do not know how I 
shall break it to the boys if you do 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


25 


not come back for the Workhouse 
tea and the servants ball,” says 
Betty, gravely. 

“But I shall! I shall! I shall!” 
cries the other, resolutely ; “ dead or 

alive you will see me back on Christ- 
mas Eve !” She repeats the assertion 
emphatically at her departure next 
day, leaning a radiant face out of 
the brougham window to blow kisses 
to the three grave persons assembled 
on the doorstep, and to bid her 
God - speed, as they and she had 
assembled to bid Uncle John God- 
speed some seven years ago. 

“She will have a moon,” says 
Betty, following with her serious, youth- 
ful eyes the carriage as it rolls 
briskly away. 

“ She ought to be there in a couple of 
hours. It is not more than eighteen 
miles, and the roads are good. Gad ! 
it is cold !” says Mr. Brewster, rub- 


25 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


bing his hands and turning to re- 
enter the house, whither his wife 
has already preceded him, and resumed 
her occupation of that sofa where, 
from some real or imagined sickness, 
she now spends the major part of 
her life. There, some good while 
later, her husband finds her stretched, 
discomposed and fretful. Her work is 
disarranged ; her silks are mixed ; she 
cannot sort the colours by candle- 
light ; Rachel always managed them 
for her. 

“ She must be nearly at Hinton 
now,” says Mr. Brewster, intermitting 
for a moment his back-warming pro- 
cess to glance at the clock on the 
chimney-piece behind him, and glad 
of a topic by which to divert the 
current of his wife’s plaints, “ the 
roads are good, and there is a moon 
as big as a cart wheel. I am glad I 
did not let her have the young 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


27 


horses, as she wanted,’* pursues he, 
in a self-congratulatory tone ; ‘‘ they 
take a great deal of driving.” 

“ I cannot think what I am to do 
without her for a whole week,” sighs 
Mrs. Brewster, pettishly. “Who is 
to tell whether this is blue or green ?” 
sitting up and helplessly comparing 
two skeins of filosel by the light of 
the shaded lamp that stands beside 
her couch. “ Where is Betty ? She 
would be better than nobody. I do 
not know how it is,” with a distinct 
access of fractiousness, “ but that girl 
always manages to be out of the way 
whenever one wants her.” 

“Talk of the devil,” cries her 
father, cheerfully ; “ here she is.” 

And in effect, as he speaks, his daughter 
enters, and moves slowly to the fire. 

“Your eyes are better than mine, 
Betty,” says the mother, holding out her 
dubious silks for her child’s inspection ; 


28 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


then suddenly, as she lifts her look 
to the girl’s face, changing her tone, 
“what is the matter with you ?” she 
asks, abruptly ; “ how odd you look !” 

Betty has paused beside her mother’s 
sofa ; and her eyes, wide open, yet 
unseeing as those of a somnambu- 
list, are fixed unthinkingly upon her. 

“ Rachel is dead,” she says, in a 
distinct, level, passionless voice, as of 
one speaking in a dream. “ I know 
it ! She touched me on the knee as 
she went by.” 

Mr. Brewster has dropped his coat 
tails, and Mrs. Brewster her silks, 
and both are staring open-mouthed, 
aghast, and dumb at their daughter. 
Mr. Brewster Is the first to recover 
his speech. 

“ What gibberish are you talking ?” 
cries he, roughly ; putting his hand 
on the girl’s wrist. “Are you walk- 
in your sleep Wake up!” 


BETTrS VISIONa 


29 


But Betty makes no answer. She 
turns slowly, as one who has accom- 
plished her errand, and walks as dreamily 
out of the room as she had entered 
it. 

Mrs. Brewster has tottered up from 
her sofa, trembling like a leaf, and 
crying copiously. 

How can you pay any heed to 
such rubbish ? ” asks her husband, 
angrily. “ The girl is hysterical. She 
would be all the better for having a 
bucket of cold water thrown over 
her. Wc have always let her have 
her own way too much, that is it.” 

But Mrs. Brewster is sobbing 
violently. 

“ Do you not remember ?” she cries. 
“It was just the same, she said just 
the same years ago, when she was 
a child, when John died.” 

“ Fiddlesticks,” says he, in a fury. 
“ Who would have expected a woman 


30 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


of your sense to be so puerilely 
superstitious ? A mere coincidence. 
Rachel dead ! Ha ! ha ! She must 
have been pretty quick about it. 
Come now, think” — (laying his hand 
friendly and reasonably upon her 
trembling shoulder) — “ what is likely 
to have happened to her in less than 
two hours ? If she had had the 
young horses, I grant you, it would 
have been a different thing, but as 
it is — there, that is better. Let me 
get you some salvolatile, and when 
next I see Miss Betty I will give 
her a piece of my mind for up- 
setting you in this way.” 

Mr. Brewster s eloquence, though not 
of a very lofty order, is yet of 
sufficient force gradually to soothe 
his wife into comparative composure, 
and, when to his reasonings he has 
added the promise, given with a 
good - humoured shrug, that a ser- 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


3 * 


vant on horseback shall be sent off 
first thing in the morning to in- 
quire after Rachel’s welfare, the poor 
lady is so far restored to her normal 
state of faint and intermittent cheer^ 
fulness, that she is able to sit down 
to dinner with tolerable appetite. 
Betty does not appear; which, though 
neither of her parents confess it, is 
a relief to both. Mr, Brewster is 
not generally much given to table- 
talk, Being of a hungry and slightly 
epicure turn, he is of opinion that 
it is impossible to do two things well 
at once, but to-day he puts forth 
his powers magnanimously to amuse 
his wife ; and the ball of talk is 
flying briskly from one to the other, 
when the butler, approaching his 
master, and even so far breaking 
through the traditions of his trade 
as to interrupt him in the middle of 
a speech, informs him in an under- 


32 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


tone “that there is a person in the 
hall who wishes to speak to him.'’ 

“ Let him wish [”• says Mr. Brew- 
ster, somewhat surly at having the 
thread of his eloquence untimely 
snapped. “ Did not you tell him I 
was at dinner ? He may wait.’' 

“If you please, sir, he says he 
must see you/’ rejoins the butler, 
with respectful persistence. “ I beg 
your pardon, sir,’' (lowering his voice 
still further, and looking meaningly 
towards Mrs. Brewster, whose atten- 
tion is at the moment wholly occu- 
pied by the feeding of a couple of 
eats) “but I think you had better 
see him.” 

There is something so odd and 
emphatic in the servant’s manner^ 
that, without offering any further 
objection, Mr. Brewster jumps up 
and hastens into the adjoining hall. 
There seem to be several persons 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


33 


in it ; maid-servants whimpering with 
their aprons to their eyes ; but the 
centre of interest is obviously a 
young man, leaning with shaking 
limbs and a sheet-white face, against 
the oak table in the middle of the 
hall. Instantly, Mr. Brewster has 
recognised him as one of the sons 
of the house to which his niece had 
gone. In a moment he is beside 
him. 

“What is it?” he says, hoarsely. 
Then, as the young fellow struggles 
in vain for utterance, “ What is it 
he repeats, shaking him by the 
shoulder. ■ *Mn God’s name, speak 
out !” 

Perhaps there is a bracing power 
in the harshness of his adjuration, 
for the stranger speaks. 

“ There — there has been an acci- 
dent,” he says, indistinctly. “Your — 
your niece— — ’’ 


34 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


“ Yes ?" 

“ She — she.” 

Again he stops, looking as if he 
were about to faint. 

“For God’s sake, go on !” says 
Mr.- Brewster, hoarsely. “ Harris, 
give him some brandy.” 

It is not until he has swallowed 
it that the young man is able to 
proceed. 

“At the corner of Hampton Lane, 
in a field, there was a rick on fire. 
The horses took fright, bolted, and 
upset the carrriage into the ditch. 
Miss Brewster was thrown off.” 

“ Thrown off ! What do you 

mean Why, she was inside !” 

“ She was driving. She had put 
the men - servants inside. She and 
her maid were on the box. She 
was thrown violently against some 
spiked iron railings, and when she 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


35 


“ Dead asks Mr. Brewster, grip- 
ping the young man’s arm and speak- 
ing in a husky whisper. “ Dead 
The attention of everyone in the 
room has been so wholly rivetted 
upon the speakers, that no one has 
perceived the opening of the dining- 
room door and the appearance of a 
figure on the threshold, until a 
terrible loud hysteric laugh breaks 
upon their ears. 

“ Dead shrieks Mrs. Brewster. 
“ Dead ? Then it was true ; then 
Betty was right.” And so falls 
heavily to the floor in a dead swoon. 


HER THIRD VISION. 


The blow does not kill Mrs. 
Brewster. Her acquaintances are all 
agreed that it must, since for years 
past their and her doctor has gone 
about the neighbourhood proclaiming 
the unparalleled weakness of her 
heart. But apparently it is not so 
weak as he had imagined, since, 
after such a shock, it still goes on 
pulsing, however feebly. Weakly 
people, with one leg habitually planted in 
the grave, take a great deal of killing ; 
but the catastrophe turns her at once 
into a hopeless invalid. After that 
day she never resumes the habits 
of health. But as time goes on, her 
valetudinarian ways assume a per- 
manence and stability with which 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 




those about her as little connect the 
idea of change and death as with 
their own robuster modes of life. 
Never to appear till one o’clock in 
the afternoon, never to join her 
family at dinner, never to be seen 
except in a recumbent posture, never 
to be told anything disagreeable. 
These are the features of her case ; 
features which may probably remain 
long after many of the healthy 
persons who come to visit her, and 
who insensibly sink and soften their 
voices on entering her dim and 
shaded room, have been carried, teet 
foremost, to the churchyard. It need 
hardly be said that no allusion either 
to her niece’s violent death, or her 
daughter’s strange prevision oi it, is 
ever allowed in Mrs. Brewster’s 
presence. And though no doctor has 
prohibited the communicating oi any 
number of disagreeable truths to Mr. 


D 


38 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


Brewster, yet neither does he ever 
allude to the facts above referred to. 
To whom should he, indeed ? To 
Betty, then ? But as to Betty, both 
her lips are shut in a silence as close 
as that of death. On being told of her 
cousin’s tragic end, she had expressed 
no more surprise than she had mani- 
fested seven years before, on hearing 
of the death by drowning, of her 
Uncle John. Not the slightest hint 
as to the mode in which the catas- 
trophe had been communicated to her 
has- ever fallen from her. It is even 
a matter of doubt to her father 
whether any consciousness or remem- 
brance of it remains with her. 
Sometimes, as he sees her seated 
tranquilly working or quietly reading, 
with as humdrum and everyday an 
air as it is possible for any human 
being to be dressed in, a poignant 
desire assails him to question her as 


BETTY’S VISIONS* 


39 


to those strange and supernatural 
intimations, of which she has twice 
been the recipient. But always a 
sort of reluctant awe restrains him. 
And meanwhile, life flows dully by 
in the old house. The boys are out 
in the world, and return but seldom 
to the house whence their bright 
playfellow has been borne to the 
grave. There is nothing to amuse 
them when they do return, since the 
state of Mrs. Brewster’s health pre- 
cludes (or she thinks so, which comes 
to the same thing,) the possibility of 
society. Betty has quietly abandoned 
the world at eighteen, in order to 
devote herself more completely to 
her parents. To speak more exactly, 
to her parent ; for Mr. Brewster is 
of a social turn, and would fain 
take his daughter into the world 
with him, making her an excuse for 
his own presence at festivities abroad 


4© 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


and merrymakings at home. But 
how can he have the inhumanity to 
set up his coarse and brutal claims 
against those far more sacred ones 
of his moribund wife.^ He is fond 
of music ; but, since Rachel’s fingers 
were stiftened in death, no one has 
dared to open the piano ; the least 
hint of such an intention would 
re-plunge the sickly wife and mother 
into those terrible hysterics, from 
which it is the main end of life 
with her nearest kin to keep her 
and themselves. And so, poor, con- 
vivial Mr. Brewster, except when 
someone charitably asks him out to 
dinner, nods through the dull even- 
ings over his newspaper, or tries to 
feign an interest he is far from 
feeling in the game of patience 
which is the one excitement of his 
good lady’s life. In complete un- 
consciousness, that good lady pursues 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


41 


her gentle way, quietly and simply 
accepting the sacrifice of the two 
lives daily offered on her invalid 
altar, and, with equal simplicity, the 
owners of those two lives unite in 
the cult of sanctified selfishness em- 
bodied in the charmingly dressed, 
diaphonous, prostrate being who has 
succeeded in delicately snuffing out 
all the mirth of their existence. It 
is three years since Rachel died, or, 
to speak more exuctly, three years 
and a quarter, for it was in the 
deepest, blackest <*lepth of winter that 
she went, and now the long-stretching 
light, the bold crocus rows, the 
courting thrushes, all tell that spring 
has come. 

Betty is twenty-one years old, for 
it was in the spring that she came, 
a spring gift blown in by the 
bustling March winds. 

** Twenty - one ! twenty - one !” she 


42 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


says over to herself. It seems to 
her a great age. She wonders 
whether it strikes other people in 
the same light. 

“Father!” she says, putting her 
arms about his neck as he sits 
running his eye rather disconsolately 
over the theatrical announcements in 
The Times, “ Do you know what an 
elderly daughter you have got ? I 
am twenty-one to-day I” 

“Twenty-one?” repeats he, with a 
jump. “You do not say so. God 
bless my soul 1” 

He sighs heavily, but, trying to 
turn it off into a cough, cries cheerfully, 

“ Well, I am to give you a present, 
I suppose. Is that what it means ? 
Well, what is it to be? A new gown 
— a necklace — what ?” 

But Betty shakes her head. 

“ I never wear out my old gowns, 
and who would see my necklace ?” 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


43 


“ What do you say to a little 
outing asks he. 

He says it in a low voice, as if 
he knew that it was a proposition 
of a contraband nature, and nervously 
glances over his shoulder as he 
makes it. 

A little jaunt — quite a little one. 
It is so long since you and I have 
had a jaunt together, Betty.” 

But again Betty shakes her head. 

“ Impossible !” she says, reproach- 
fully ; and yet a little regretfully, too. 
“ How could mother spare us ?” 

“Not for long, of course,” rejoins 
he, hastily, “ but just a run up to 
London for a couple of nights. We 
might be there and back almost 
before she had time to miss us ; 
just a run up to see a play.” 

“It is a long time” (rather rue- 
fully) “since I have seen a play,” 
says Betty. 


44 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


She is leaning over his chair, her 
arms round his neck, and is reading 
the theatrical announcements with him. 

“ Lyceum, Strand, Vaudeville,” she 
says, with a little sigh, that shows 
that she, too, is nibbling at the 
temptation. “ How nice they all 
look !” 

“ We will do a couple of plays, 
Betty !” cries her father, audaciously, 
and in a higher key than he has 
yet spoken in. “I see that they are 
giving that old piece, ‘ The First 
Night," at the Court. It was the 
first play I ever saw. My father 
took me to it when I was quite a 
little chap. Horace Wigan played in 
it. You do not remember Horace 
Wigan No! Why should we not 
go to-morrow, eh ?” 

His daughter has put up her hand 
apprehensively to check him : 

“ Hush 1” she says, hurriedly ; here 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


45 


is mother !” And in effect, as she 
speaks, the folding-doors have been 
thrown open ; and, as always happens 
at this hour of the day, Mrs. Brew- 
ster is wheeled slowly in on a couch 
out of her bedroom ; Mrs. Brewster, 
prostrate, transparent, suffering, as 
usual. In a moment the husband’s 
voice has sunk to a subdued invalid 
pitch : 

‘‘How are you to - day, dear ?” he 
asks, hastening to his wife’s side, 
and kindly taking her languid hand, 
“ any better 

“ I shall never be better in this 
world,” replies she, exhilaratingly ; 
‘■‘but,” (her sick eyes wandering sus- 
piciously from one to the other of 
her two companions) “what is it that 
I am not to hear, Betty ? Why did 
you say ‘ hush ?’ ” 

There is a moment of confused 
silence, uneasily broken by Mr. Brew- 


46 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


ster. ‘‘ Betty has been telling me 
that she is twenty -one to-day.” 

“She could hardly object to my 
hearing that,” replies her mother, 
drily. “ Come, Betty, what was it ?” 

“It was only that father was 
talking nonsense ; you know that he 
does sometimes,” replies the girl, 
with a little constrained laugh, kneel- 
ing down beside her mother’s sofa, 
and raising her thin fingers. 

“ I am not at all sure that it was 
such nonsense, after all 1” says he, 
speaking in a rather blustering voice, 
which his daughter knows to conceal 
much inward misgiving. 

“ I — I — was only proposing to — to — 
take her for a little outing, you see,” 
(after a pause, as his proposition is 
received in entire silence) “ you see,” 
(growing nervous) “she — she has not 
a very lively time of it — for a girl 
mewed up with us two old people.” 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


47 


Still silence. At last, “ I am 
sorry that you are so dull, Betty,” 
says the invalid, in a wounded voice, 
withdrawing her hand. “ Why did 
you not tell me so before ?” But at 
this, poor Betty collapses into sobs. 

“ Good God !” cries Mr. Brewster, 
starting up and stamping about the 
room for a moment, forgetful of the 
sanctity of the spot. I mean, bless 
me, Maria, my dear, what has the 
poor girl done ?” Maria’s answer is 
what the answer of any invalid who re- 
spects herself must inevitably be, a sink- 
ing flat back on her pillows, with hands 
and feet grown suddenly rigid, in a 
faint, so admirably counterfeited, as 
to take in even herself. Mr. Brew- 
ster is quietly, and perhaps a little 
compassionately, hustled out of the 
room by his daughter, and thus in 
disastrous ignominy his bold project 
ends. And yet — such are the tides 


48 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


in the affairs of men — on that very 
day week he is buying Worlds^ and 
Truths, and Queens, for Betty at 
the station, to beguile their joint 
journey up to London, for that very 
outing upon which Mrs. Brewster 
would seem to have put so complete 
an extinguisher. And, stranger still, 
it is Mrs. Brewster herself who 
sends them. Whether it is the sight 
of her patient daughter, or of her 
clumsy, yet most genuinely remorse- 
ful husband, or some pinch of her 
own not dead but only slumbering 
conscience that effects the change, is 
of little moment. Certain it is that 
it is effected. 

‘‘What day do you set off.^” she 
asks, suddenly ; one evening, as she 
lies with her eyes fixed on her 
daughter’s face ; that unjoyous young 
face, which is bent with untiring 
gentleness over that piece of work ot 


BEfTY’S VISIONS. 


49 


her mothers which is eternally need- 
ing to be set right. 

“Set off.^” repeats Betty, lifting 
her head, and looking apprehensive 
and a little guilty. “ Where to 

“ That is what you can tell me 
better than I can tell you,” replies the 
mother, drily, with a faint shade of 
resentment still lingering against her 
will in her tone. “Your father was 
anything but explicit ; he spoke of 
‘ an outing ; ’ that might mean Kams- 
chatka or Kew.” 

“ He — he was talking nonsense !” 
replies Betty, red and stammering. 

“No, he was not,” rejoins the 
mother, calmly ; “ but I was taken so 
ill — if you remember, it was on the 
day that I was taken so ill — that he 
had not time to explain.” 

This sincere attempt to displace 
her husband s unlucky suggestion and 
her own seizure from their natural 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


SO 


relation as cause and effect, an attempt 
which, as she knows in her own 
heart, takes in neither herself nor her 
daughter, brings a weak pink flush 
into the sick woman’s cheek. 

“He was talking nonsense !” repeats 
Betty, murmuringly ; “men often do,” 
she adds, with an audacious and 
illiberal generality. 

“What he said was quite true,” 
rejoins Mrs. Brewster, reflectively ; 
“ it is a cruelly dull life for a young 
thing like you.” 

“But I am not young !” cries 
Betty, eagerly ; “ I am old, old ! 

If you only knew how old 1 feel 
inside.” 

“Well, if you do, I do not!” says 
Mrs. Brewster, with a sort of 
tremulous playfulness. “To tell you 
the truth, I think we have been 
mewing ourselves up a great deal 
too much of late ; that we should 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


S* 


be all the better for having a little 
air from the outer world let in upon 
us ; in short,” (laughing nervously) 
“ I have half a mind to join in 
your outing myself.” 

“ Oh, if you could !” cries the girl, 
kneeling down by her mother, and 
laying her head caressingly on the 
pillow beside the invalid ; “ but since 
you cannot * 

“ Since I cannot,” interrupts the 
other with dec ision ; “ you must go 

instead of me, ?nd come back and 
tell me all about it. There, say no 
more. That is settled.” 

And settled, despite Betty’s many 
tearful and compunctious remonstrances, 
it is. The day has come. Betty 
has, as nearly as possible, lost the 
train through her inability, at the last 
moment, to tear herself away from 
that shaded room and that, couch 
that of late have been all her world 


52 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


‘■Are you sure that you can do 
without us ? Are you sure that you will 
not miss us ?” she reiterates, with her 
eyes full of tears ; and half-a-dozen 
of Mr. Brewster’s impatient “ Be ttys” 
are turned a deaf ear to by his 
daughter. But at last he gets her 
away ; at last he gets her to the 
station and into the train. She 
had set off in a most unenjoying 
mood — apprehensive, half remorseful — 
but she has not gone five miles 
before nature and youth resume their 
inevitable sway. Did ever express 
train rush with so smooth a speed ? 
and how pleasant once again to see 
the flying hedges, browsing sheep, 
smoky towns galloping away together. 
Gallop as they may, they are yet 
stationary, and she is tearing on- 
wards. What a feeling of superiority 
it gives one ! And then, when 
London is reached, what can be 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


53 


more exhilarating and amusing than 
the streets ? They seem to pre- 
sent a broad farce, got up and 
acted expressly for her entertainment. 
And the real farce to which they go 
in the evening.^ It is not very funny, 
but they laugh till they cry over it. 
Their mirth is so uncontrollable, in- 
deed, that one or two persons in the 
stalls near them turn their heads to 
look in astonishment at them. But 
then, perhaps, these persons laugh 
every night. Mr. Brewster and his 
daughter are still laughing over the 
threadbare jests in their sitting-room 
at the hotel on their return. They 
are still laughing when Mr. Brewster 
leaves the room to give some direc- 
tions to the servant for the next 
day. He is not absent more than 
ten minutes. On his return, he finds 
Betty standing in the middle of the 
room. Her face is turned towards 


54 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


him, but, as he sees at the first 
glance, it is not the same face as 
that with which he had left her. 
There is no smile upon it, nor any 
expression of recognition. It wears 
the look which he has once before 
seen upon it — the sightless stare of 
a somnambulist. An indefinable terror 
seizes him as he goes up to her. 

“ What is the matter with you 
he asks, unsteadily. ‘‘Why do you 
look so odd 

“We must go home,” she says, 
speaking in a mechanical, immodulated 
voice, as one in a trance, to whom 
the words are dictated by some re- 
sistless alien power. “ Mother is 
dead ! She touched me on the foot 
as she went by.” 

They are nearly the same words 
as those which Mr. Brewster had 
heard his daughter employ on the 
occasion of her cousin’s death ; but 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


55 


this time he can meet them with no 
derisive incredulity. A sudden trem- 
bling has seized him, such as had 
seized upon his sick wife on that 
former occasion. 

“ What do you mean ?” he asks, 
almost in a whisper — “ did you — did 
you see her ?” 

She makes no answer ; only moves 
slowly towards the door of the ad- 
joining bedroom. 

“ Betty !” cries the father, in an 
agony of apprehension, following her, 
“you must speak! You have no 
right to say such things 1 What did 
you see ? In God’s name tell me 
what dzd you see?” 

But she is as if she heard him 
not. Without making any answer she 
passes out of sight. Something tells 
him that it would be vain to make 
any further appeals to her. It Is 
even extremely doubtful whether she 


56 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


was aware of his presence. He 
throws himself into an arm chair, 
and then, rising, begins to walk fast 
and feverishly up and down the room, 
in the vain endeavour to shake off 
the panic that is mastering him. 

‘'The girl is of an exceptionally 
nervous organisation. She has been 
upset by this sudden change from 
the long gloom of her past life ; it 
is a form of hysteria.*’ 

But even as he says to himself 
these reassuring phrases, a cold re- 
miniscence checks them. He had 
called her hysterical on the occasion 
of that former warning. His eyes 
fall accidentally on the clock. The 
hand points to half-past twelve. The 
thought crosses his mind with a sort 
of relief that all the telegraph offices 
must be shut. The only sensible 
course to pursue is to dismiss the 
matter as quickly as possible from 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


57 


his mind, go to bed and dream, 
if he can compass it, of the farce, 
whose merriment seems now to be 
parted from him by a chasm. But 
to go to bed is ohe thing ; to go to 
sleep another. Mr. Brewster finds 
the one as difficult as the other was 
easy. Reason as he may with him- 
self, chide, ridicule his own folly, 
there is not one hour of the night 
or early morning that he does not 
hear told by all the church and hotel 
clocks. From the short, tired doze, 
into which he falls at last, he is 
awakened by the opening of the door, 
and springs back to consciousness 
with a frightened jump. Pooh ! it is 
only his man with his hot water ! 
And so it is. But, beside the hot 
water, what is it that his valet is 
carrying in his hand ? Is it not an 
envelope, the first glimpse of whose 
colour turns the master sick ? In a 


58 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


second he has snatched it, torn it 
open, mastered its short contents, 
which, after all, he had already known. 
“ Come home at once. Mrs. Brew- 
ster died suddenly at twelve last 
night.” 

Mr. Brewster and his daughter 
have returned to the so lately left 
home. It is the day before the 
funeral, and they are sitting together 
in that heavy idleness which charac- 
terises such dread days. It is 
a dark afternoon, and the gloom 
is so greatly deepened by the 
lowered blinds that occupation would 
be difficult. They are holding each 
others hands, as if that helped 
them a little. For nearly an hour 
neither has spoken, but suddenly Mr. 
Brewster breaks the leaden silence. 

“ Betty,” he says, in a low voice, 
** how did you know } Did you see 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


59 


her ? I asked you at the time, but 
you did not answer me. You did 
not seem to hear.” 

She hears him now at all events, 
for her hand first trembles violently 
in his clasp, and is then withdrawn 
from it. But neither now does she 
answer. 

“Tell me,” repeats the father with 
imploring urgency, “ Betty, tell me, 
did you see her ?” 

Betty has put up her hand to her 
forehead, and into her face has come 
an expression of dazed, bewildered 
misery. 

“ I don’t know,” she answers, un- 
certainly. 

“You do not know?” repeats he, 
with gathering excitement ; “ you nmst 
know! Think, child, think! You cannot 
have forgotten ; did you really see her ?’* 

The look of puzzled wretchedness 
grows intenser. 


6o 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


** Oh, do not ask me,” she cries, 
loudly, in a voice of acute pain. I 
would tell you if I could, but — I — 
I — do not know.” 

Her voice dies slowly away at 

the last word into a wail of misery, 
and on her forehead the intense look 
as of one agonising to overtake a 

gone memory, grows more painfully 

evident. It would be inhumanity to 
urge her further, so the problem has 
to be left as unsolved as ever. 


HER FOURTH VISION. 


Another year has slipped by. Poor 
Mrs. Brewster’s sudden death has 
long been superseded as a topic of 
conversation in the neighbourhood by 
less threadbare ones. To tell the 
truth, it had never been a subject of 
universal lamentation. Even into the 
very earliest expressions of pity and 
regret have crept hopes, that, when 
the days of mourning for the poor 
lady are ended, the house may be 
once more open for social purposes. 
And now that the year of conven- 
tional seclusion is running to its last 
sands, faint signs of such an impend- 
ing re-opening are not altogether 
wanting, to gladden the hearts of the 
dancing boys and girls in. the 


62 


BETTY'S VISIONS. 


vicinage. Mr. Brewster is far from 
being an old man. At fifty-five, 
under healthy conditions, there is still 
a great deal of enjoying power left 
in a man, and Betty is undeniably 
a young woman. At twenty-two, in 
fact, she is, and looks, a younger 
woman than she was and did at 
twenty-one. Betty and her father 
would account it blasphemy were you 
to hint such a thing to them, but 
in point of fact they are a great 
deal happier than they were while 
their suffering Maria yet blessed them 
with her presence and her sofa. The 
sofa had been reverently wheeled 
into a comer, the rooms are again 
full of light and air. Mr. Brewster 
need no longer tone down his hearty 
voice lest it should break into some 
doze, snatched fitfully at 'unexpected 
moments of the day. Betty need no 
longer cut short her stroll in the 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


63 


garden, or her rides in the lanes, in 
the fear that a faint, complaining 
voice may be summoning her, and 
she out of hearing. They have both, 
to do them justice, honestly tried to 
check the first weak germs of cheer- 
fulness in themselves and each other, 
but in vain. Little innovations, for 
which neither knew whom to blame, 
have crept in somehow. The tennis 
ground, long disused, has been new- 
mowm, rolled, and marked out ; 
occasionally, a young man or a girl, 
driving over to call, has lured Betty, 
reluctant at first, half-shocked and 
yet hankering, into a game. Occa- 
sionally, too, one such young guest, a 
man, has stayed so late that it would 
be a breach of the first elements of 
hospitality not to invite him to stay 
to dinner. And somehow, after 
dinner — if one has a guest, one 
must do what one can to amuse him. 


64 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


All three have strayed into the 
billiard - room, and knocked the balls 
about till the stable clock has tolled 
midnight This one guest, after a 
while, becomes singled out from the 
other chance comers, by the frequency 
and regularity of his appearances. 
Without any but a tacit invitation, he 
has fallen into the habit of coming, 
first on alJ. Mondays ; next on all 
Mondays and Fridays ; then on all 
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays ; 
by-and-bye he occasionally throws in a 
Sunday too ; and sometimes a Satur- 
day, if he has anything particular to 
say. Perhaps, being a moderately 
well-to-do-squire, with an agent whom 
he has no reason for distrusting, and 
a house which, though of comfortable 
dimensions for two, is over roomy for 
one, he is thankful to find a com- 
plaisant small family on whom he can 
bestow his too abundant leisure. It 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


r65 

is a Thursday evening, and Mr. 
Brewster and his daughter are sitting 
tete • a ‘ tite after dinner ; he turning 
over the sheets of the just-arrived 
Globe^ she placidly stitching opposite 
him, when a ring at the hall door 
bell is heard through the house. 
Rings at the front door are, in the 
depth of the country, not common 
occurrences at nine o’clock in the 
evening, and are wont to excite sur- 
prise if not alarm. Such, however, 
is not the emotion provoked in the 
master of the house on this occasion. 
He looks over the top of his Globe 
at his daughter, who shows no great 
eagerness to meet his eye, and says, 
lifting his brows, with an expression 
half reproachful, half humourous, 
“Again, Betty Why, I thought this 
was our free day, did not you T 
“ Free day !” repeat.s Betty, stam- 
mering. “ Free from what } I — I — . 
don’t know what you mean !” 


66 


BETTY^S VISIONS. 


“ I am sure you do not ; of course 
not; you cannot give a guess/’ 
replies her father, drily. 

T'here is a smile on his lips, but 
his eyes are vexed. He has just 
begun to enjoy his life again, good, 
easy man, and in that enjoyment 
Betty’s presence is a main factor. 
She hears, and is stung by the 
annoyance in his tone. Running im- 
pulsively over to him, she sits down 
on the floor at his knee. 

“ Do you think he comes too 
often ?” she asks, trembling. “ Do 
you mind ?” 

“It is to be hoped for my sake 
that I do not,” rejoins he, still more 
drily than before ; then, lifting by 
force the girl’s face, which she has 
buried on the arm of his chair, 
“ Why, Betty, you are as red as a 
turkey cock. You traitor, you knew 
he was coming. Might I ask — with 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


^67 

an ungovernable intonation of bitter- 
ness and alarm — whether he has 
anything particular to say ?” 

Steps are heard in the hall. The 
servants, who have not hurried them- 
selves, are going to the door. She 
must make haste to answer. 

“ Do you mind ?” she repeats, 
agitatedly. “If you do, he shall go 
away ; he shall say nothing.” 

For a moment Mr. Brewster 
struggles, and it would be, perhaps, 
rash to say that no malediction against 
his future son-in-law formulates itself 
in his heart. Then, his natural un- 
selfishness, which was kept in high 
training through many years by his 
sainted Maria, conquers, and he says 
cheerfully, “ Mind ? Why should I 
mind ? Do you think that I want 
to have a cranky old maid on my 
hands ?” Then, as the door opens 
and the guest is announced, “ How 


68 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


are you, Carrington ? Very glad to 
see you.” 

• •••••• 

Two months later, Carrington and 
Betty are made one. Mr. Brewster 
has been the life of the wedding 
party, has made a better speech 
and more jokes, and has thrown 
more shoes and rice than any other 
member of the company. When the 
last guest has gone, he shuts himself 
into his study and cries like a child. 
Then he has his portmanteau packed, 
and takes the night mail for London 
and Paris. His empty house, void 
now both of his poor, peevish Maria 
and his consoling Betty, is more 
than he can bear. He is absent 
above a year, his travels being ex- 
tended beyond the familiar bounds of 
Europe to China and Japan. What 
is there to bring him back ? But at 
the end of the year there is some 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


69 


thing. Does not obligativ w lie upon 
him to go home and see Betty’s 
baby } The thought of Betty with a 
baby makes him laugh, albeit tenderly. 
And then, at the close of a lone 
summer day’s travelling, comes the 
re-union with Betty herself Betty, 
who cannot hang long enough about 
his neck, or reproach him fondly 
enough with his protracted absence, 
or tell him often enough how she 
has wearied for a sight of his face. 
And yet, he thinks to himself, with 
a sort of semi-bitterness, “ Can anyone 
so blooming have wearied much 
really ?” 

His Betty was a pale, shut bud, 
this Betty is an expanded flower, 
that has opened its petals wide to 
the sun of happiness — that sun which 
he had never been able to make 
shine upon her. But, in time, honestly 
struggled against, this bitterness goes. 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


70 

His daughter's unfeigned delight in 
his company, the ruthless way in 
which she makes everyone’s con- 
venience — even adored husband’s and 
worshipped baby’s — curtsey to his, 
could not fail to soothe a self - love 
more susceptible than Mr. Brewster’s. 
His visit prolongs Itself from days to 
weeks, from weeks to months. His 
daughter is always pressing upon him 
her loving importunities that he 
should live with them. “ Why should 
you ever go ?” she asks, for the 
hundredth time, on the evening pre- 
ceding the day he has at length 
finally fixed upon for his departure. 
‘‘Jack says he does not know what 
he shall do without you.” 

“ Perhaps time and the consolations 
of religion may reconcile him to the 
blow,” replies Mr. Brewster, with a 
little mild satire. 

“He says he cannot account for 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


71 


my not being nicer than I am, 
having such a father,” pursues Betty, 
wheedlingly ; ‘‘come, you have not 
answered me ; why should not you 
stay with us alway 

“ I must not make myself too 
common, Betty,” says he, jestingly ; 
“if I lived with you, you could not 
make such a fuss with me as you 
have been doing for the last three 
months. I like to be made a fuss 
with.” 

And this is all the answer she 
gets out of him, and so she has to 
let him go, but not without plenteous 
tears and strenuous adjurations to 
return, before the month is out, for 
good. He has now been gone a 
week. For the first day or two after 
losing him, his daughter’s spirits 
drooped extremely ; but before long, 
her youth, the happy conditions of 
her life, her husband’s good humour, 


72 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


and the baby’s allurements restore her 
equanimity. It is an August evening, 
hot and fair, and Betty has stept out 
of the dining-room window, according 
to her wont on such evenings, to bid 
the sleepy flowers good night, and 
hail the moon, the great, red, harvest 
moon wheeling up above the beech- 
wood, and waited on by her silver 
handmaid, stars. Mr. Carrington re- 
mains at the dining-table, sipping his 
claret, and looking out contentedly at 
the flitting white figure that now and 
then stops to throw in an affectionate 
glance at him, and an enthusiastic 
ejaculation as to the loveliness of the 
night, to which latter he responds 
with all a Briton’s unexpansive brevity. 
For a moment or two the figure has 
disappeared — gone, no doubt, to visit 
its Night Stocks, and Mr. Carrington 
has fallen into a placid reverie on 
beeves and farming implements, when 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


73 


he is startled by the sound of a 
sharp cry from the direction of the 
garden. To jump up and fly through 
the window is with him the work of 
a moment. He has, after all, not far 
to go. At a hundred paces from him 
on the terrace, he sees his wife stand- 
ing, and, as he nears her, perceives 
that she is gazing before her in a 
blank, unseeing way. Surprised and 
frightened, he takes her by the arm, 
crying “What is it.^” 

“ Father is dead,” she says, in a 
voice of acute agony ; not as if 
answering him, nor even being aware 
of his presence. “ I know it ; he 
touched me on the head as he went 
by.” 

“ Betty,” cries the young man, 
puzzled and frightened, “ what is the 
matter ? What are you talking about 

He knows nothing of her visions. 
It is not a subject, which, since her 


74 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


father’s last appeal to her for ex- 
planation, on the occasion of her 
mother’s death, has been mentioned 
between him and her. Much less 
has any breath of them ever reached 
an outsider. She does not answer." 
She only gazes stonily straight before 
her in the moonlight. A cold terror 
seizes on Carrington. Has she gone 
mad ? In an instant the thought has 
flashed through his mind. Is there 
madness in her family ? Can he ever 
formerly have heard a whisper of, 
and forgotten it ? If not, is this the 
beginning of some frightful illness, 
some hideous catalepsy ? He catches 
her hand. It is cold and rigid. 

“ Betty ! Betty ! why do you 
frighten me so ? What is it ? For 
God’s sake, speak !” 

But she turns away from him, and be- 
gins to walk dumbly towards the house. 
He overtakes her, and now, thoroughly 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


75 


ahirmed, catches her in his arms, “Betty, 
^vhat have I done to you ? Will not you 
speak to me You must speak.” 

Still she is silent, nor can any 
adjuration, however solemn, or en- 
treaty, however tender, succeed 
in drawing one further word from 
her. Before he knows it she has 
slipped out of his arms and made 
her way indoors, Mr. Carrington 
passes a dreadful night, entirely 
sleepless, and crowded with hideous 
fears. Before his eyes, whether shut 
or open, the spectre madness does 
not cease to dance. On what 
other hypothesis can he explain his 
wife’s sudden seizure ? Is it the first 
of the kind, or has she previously 
been subject to such ? This is one 
of the problems that torment him, 
and that he has no means of solving. 
There is no old nurse or other 
faithful family servant, whom he 


76 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


can consult upon the point. His 
wife’s maid came to her only at. 
her marriage. He has not had the 
heart to go to bed, but has seen 
from his dressing-room window, with 
the tired eyes of one that has all 
night watched the stars go out, and 
the new day that in August still 
comes early, unfolding one after 
another, and putting on its many- 
coloured robes of splendour. Will 
this new day solve his riddle for 
him? His head aches, and his eye- 
balls burn. Perhaps the morning 
wind may make him feel less 
stupefied. Having listened at Betty’s 
door and heard no sound — perhaps 
she may be in a wholesome sleep, 
from which she may wake cured and 
sane — he goes downstairs and out of 
doors. As he is walking towards the 
stable, drawing in long breaths of 
the exquisite summer air, he sees a 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


77 


telegraph boy approaching him. For 
me?” he asks, indifferently, as the 
messenger holds out his missive to 
him, and so absently opens it, his 
thoughts full of his own trouble — so 
full that for the first moment they 
do not grasp the meaning of the 
words presented to his eye : Mr. 

Brewster seized with apoplexy last 
night at nine o’clock ; dead in ten 
minutes ; come or send directions.” 
For a moment, he reels as if he 
were drunk, Betty’s words rushing 
back in ghastly letters of fire before 
his mind’s eye. She knew it at the 
very time it had happened ! Great 
God I how did she know it? 


HER FIFTH AND LAST 
VISION. 

It is no great wonder that after such 
a shock Betty falls dangerously ill. 
For weeks she lies between life and 
death, and months elapse before she 
is restored to her former strength. 
Her husband nurses her with devoted 
and untiring tenderness ; sits by her 
through long night after long night, 
listening to her wanderings — (for she 
is often delirious) — wanderings about 
the long - departed playfellow of her 
childhood, Rachel ; about dear, dead 
dogs and birds ; about her sick 
mother ; nay, most of all, about her 
father too. And yet, listen as closely 
as he may, not once does he catch 
any least word as to the mysterious 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


79 


seizure and the unexplained fore- 
warning which had preceded that 
father’s death. Not even in highest 
delirium, when the bonds of reason 
are loosened, and the thoughts and 
feelings deepest buried, come to the 
surface, does she make any most 
distant allusion to it. It must be 
gone from her mind as completely as 
if it had never found a resting-place 
there. After a long time she creeps 
slowly back to convalescence, an un- 
certain, precarious convalescence, at 
first, but which gradually gains in 
solidity and dependableness as the 
languid days go by. Days passed, 
in lying for the most part, silent and 
pale in her great arm chair, pressing 
occasionally ner husband’s hand, as 
he sits fondly at her feet, or strok- 
ing his hair, and occasionally breaking 
into faint smiles at the antics of the 
baby, who has taken the opportunity 


So 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


of her mother’s illness to double 
herself in size, and has adopted a 
mode of progressing along the floor 
from chair leg to chair leg, which 
Betty, not having much acquaintance 
with other babies, thinks original, and 
admires with proportionate ecstacy. 
After a while, the hand that had 
feebly patted Carrington’s head rests 
on his arm, as he leads her, warmly 
wrapped up, to the nearest of her 
garden haunts. The first day she 

does not get further than the terrace. 
The last time that she had 
visited it, was the evening on which 
he had found her cold and struck in 
the moonlight. His memory is full 

of this circumstance, as he leads her 
slowly along ; but it seems to 

have no place in hers. Perhaps 
it is the entirely changed aspect 
of the scene, from summer moon- 
light to winter sunshine that keeps 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


8l 


recollection at bay. She makes 
little, interested comments upon the 
rimy grass, the frost ~ bound flower 
borders, upon the removal of some 
remembered shrub, but no ripple seems 
to stir the waters of any deeper 
memory. 

Seeing her so insensible, he cannot 
resist experimentalising upon her, so 
far as to pause at the exact spot 
upon which, on that fatal night, he 
had found her standing. But she 
only looks up at him, smiling out of 
her furs, her thin face a little tinted 
by the sharp wind, and asks, 

'‘What are you stopping for? You 
need not think that I am tired yet.” 
He looks earnestly into her eyes, 
but they are obviously entirely un- 
conscious, as is the brain behind them, 
of the remembrances of which his are 
full. It is clear that he must defer 
any probing of memory until she is 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


Ss 

fully restored to health. And when 
at length — it is indeed at length — 
this comes to pass, his mind has 
taken such a habit of anxiety for his 
fragile treasure, that he shrinks from 
imperilling the hardly-won good by 
presenting to her mind any images 
but those that are smiling and cheer- 
ful. From day to day he defers the 
putting of that question which is so 
often at the end of his tongue, and 
so it comes to pass that it is never 
asked at all. Time, as he goes by, 
brings many good things to the Car- 
ringtons, and so far — and now the 
baby is three years old — no bad ones 
If there are any drawbacks to the 
fact of possessing an only child, even 
they will shortly be removed, for 
Betty hopes, ere long, to embrace a 
son. She is looking forward with 
strong longings, and without any fear, 
to the expected blessing. 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


No dreams or visions, or eerie 
warnings of any kind have disturbed 
her placid prosperity. The season is 
as prosperous as she, and now, in 
late June, the farmers are garnering 
their heavy hay crops without a drop 
of rain, and life is one long fragrant 
feast with the strawberry beds for 
board. Mr. Carrington has set off 
upon a long day s trout fishing — an 
elastic sort of little excursion, which 
may end to-night, may be prolonged 
till to-morrow. 

“ Do not hurry back,” says Betty, 
bidding her husband good bye ; “ enjoy 
yourself, old man ! I am only afraid” 
— glancing from the absolutely un- 
clouded sky to the rather parched 
grass — “ that you will find the river 
a little low.” And so, in the early 
morning, she waves him a . smiling 
farewell, leaning in her cool white 
gown against the porch, and crying 


84 


liETTY’S VISIONS. 


cheerfully, “ Bring me home plenty of 
trout 1” 

The day turns out a very hot one, 
but what matter to one who can si; 
under a great beech’s shade all day, 
with a cabbage leaf full of straw- 
berries beside her, and engaged in no 
severer exertion than to watch little 
Betty tumbling in the hay, and 
occasionally set her dislocated hat 
straight again upon her yellow curls. 
There seems a slight want of imagi- 
nation in having christened the child 
Betty, too, and so the elder Betty 
pointed out to her husband. 

'‘Will not it make a great confusion 
having two Bettys.?” she asks. But 
he, in all the hot and foolish ardour 
of young husbandhood, asseverates 
that there cannot be too much of a 
good thing ; there cannot be to® 
many Bettys. She lifts her eyebrows 
with a languid smile. 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


85 


“ Then if we have six daughters 
they will all be Bettys !” But this 
extravagant suppos tion he refuses to 
face. And now little Betty’s bed-time 
has come. It is hard work to tear 
her away, kicking and screaming, 
from the sympathetic haymakers. It 
is hard work to get her into her bath, 
and it is harder still to get her out 
again. Far and wide the water 
splashes, and the soap - suds fly under 
the excited plunges of her fat legs. 
The delights of the day have almost 
turned her little brain. Laughing, 
crying, wildly hilarious ; finally, very 
tired and outrageously cross, she is at 
length laid in bed, and almost before 
her jiaughty gold head has touched 
the pillow, is asleep. 

‘‘ Fast as a rock,” says the nurse, 
bending admiringly over her. So fast 
that neither nurse nor mother need 
lower their voices as they discuss 


86 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


with the grave interest that befits so 
momentous a theme, what frock little 
Betty is to wear at a strawberry- 
eating and haymaking party in the 
neighbourhood to which she is to be 
taken on the morrow. 

“ Of course, she looks best in 
white,” says the nurse, thoughtfully re- 
viewing the little garments spread out 
for inspection ; ‘‘ it shows up her skin 
best. I never saw such a skin, if you 
will believe me, ma’am. 1 really 
cannot tell sometimes where the child’s 
frock ends and her neck begins.” 

“She is as fair as a lily,” asserts 
the mother, proudly. 

“ She has got shockingly tanned 
to-day,” pursues the nurse, regretfully. 
“ I could not get her to keep her 
hat on. As fast as I put it on she 
tore it off again. She was like a mad 
thing, and I did want her to look her 
best to-morrow.” 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 




“ But she will,” rejoins the mother, 
fondly. “ She is a most satisfactory 
child ; she always looks her best when 
one wants her. Bring out some more 
of her frocks. I do not quite like any 
of these.” 

The nurse complies, and walking to 
a high press, sacred to little Betty’s 
voluminous wardrobe, begins to pull 
out drawers and choose the daintiest 
of the many little changes of raiment 
lying there in lavender. Her mistress 
does not interrupt her by any 
comment or suggestion. When her 
selection is at length made, the nurse 
returns towards her mistress with a 
heap of little clouics. thrown over her 
arm. She is so occupied in turning 
them over, that she does not look up 
until she is quite close to Mrs. 
Carrington, when, lifting her eyes, 
she becomes aware that the latter, 
with an ash-white face and a terrible 


S8 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


blank look, is putting up both her 
hands, as if keeping off from herself 
something unspeakably feared and 
terrible. 

“ I must die to-morrow !” she says, 
in a voice so changed, so full of awe 
and horror, as to be almost unrecog- 
nisable. “ I know. It touched me 
OP :he heart as it went by.” 

Good God, ma’am, what is the 
matter t What ails you t What 
touched you ?” shrieks the nurse, 
beside herself with vague fear. 

But her mistress makes no answer, 
and only falls from her chair on the 
floor in a dead, dead swoon. 

• •••••» 

The river has not been so low as 
Mr. Carrington feared, the sky too, has 
clouded over opportunely, and he has 
had better sport than he hoped for. 
He has fished on and on and on ; 
down and down the river, until it 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


89 


was too late to return home that 
night ; so he puts up at a .ittle, 
riverside ale - house, well known to 
him of old ; dines hungrik on some 
of his own trout, and, sleeping sweetly, 
dreams of May flies and Ginger 
hackles. All next day he fishes 
again ; and it is not till evening that 
he at length sees his own house rise 
before him against the rose - red 
sunset. He has walked from the 

station. Since he had not sent word 

at what hour he' was to be expected, 
no vehicle awaits him. But the 
distance is short, and he enjoys 
the v/alk, with the prospect of Betty’s 
smile and some more trout at the 
end of it. “How early they have 
shut up the house,” he says to him- 
self as he comes within sight of the 
building, and becomes aware that all 
the blinds are drawn, down. “ What . 
is the meaning of that, I v^ onder.^” 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


f 90 

A little puzzled, but not alarmed, he 
walks in, and, entering the house by 
the garden door, looks into his wife’s 
boudoir. She is not there. Into the 
drawing-room, she is not there ; the 
library, not there ; the smoking-room, 
not there. He passes out upon the 
terrace and calls “ Betty, Betty,” but 
there is no answer. “Pooh! how 
stupid ; of course she has gone up to 
dress for dinner.” He runs lightly 
upstairs and turns the handle of his 
wife’s bed-room door. It is locked. 
What does this mean ? He calls 
“ Betty, Betty, open the door.” But 
she does not answer. The idea 
strikes him that he can enter by his 
dressing - room. Yes, it’s door is not 
locked. In one moment he has passed 
through it and is in the bed-room. 
Why are his legs beginning to shake 
under him ? The light is dim, the 
blinds pulled down to the bottom, and 


BETTY^S VISIONS. 


91 


no candles lit. Betty cannot be here ; 
surely she is not here. Involuntarily 
his eye falls on the bed. What is 
this ? There is a great white sheet 
drawn over it, and beneath that sheet 
an outline. In a second (how he gets 
there he never knows) he is at the 
bedside, the sheet is turned down, 
and he has learned what lies beneath 
it. His Betty dead and rigid, with a 
dead baby beside her! For it, what- 
ever the mysterious messenger was, 
has kept its word. 


FINIS, 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


SCENE I. 

It was a bitter January morning, a 
morning that obviously was not going 
to mend into a tolerable day, but 
had every intention of increasing into 
an intolerable one. The state of the 
weather was, perhaps, enough to ac- 
count for that of my appearance, as 
to the unfavourable condition of which, 
the chorus of comments from three 
over-truthful daughters could not and 
did not leave in doubt for a moment 
after my entering the breakfast room. 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


93 


How wretched you look]” said 
Alice, the eldest 

^^You are in for one of your bad 
colds,” said Ruth, the second, 

** Y ou have been writing upstairs in 
a room without a fire, as we forbid 
you to do,” said Susan, the youngest 
and most tyrannous, 

I made no sort of answer to these 
compliments, but walking up to the 
fire stood holding my hands to the 
blaze. 

Do not play us the same trick 
that you did last year,” said Alice, 
setting a chair close to the fender 
for me, ** and fall ill on the eve of 
the bachelors’ ball I” 

No,” added Ruth, laughing ; we 
bore it once in a way, but we draw 
the line at a second time i” 

You wor.ld not palm us off. again 
upon Lady Brown, would you asked 
Susan, coaxingly, kneeling down on 


94 


BETTY'S VISIONS. 


the rug beside me, and beginning to 
rub one of my cold hands between 
her two warm ones. “You would 
not entrust your little ones to an old 
monster who eat.- supper until she 
cannot see, and then snatches them 
aw^ay just as the real fun is begin- 
ning.’^ 

“ It is very odd,” said I, with a 
somev/hat sarcastic crossness ; “ how 
solicitous you girls always grow about 
my health at this time of year. I 
might be moribund all through Lent 
without any of you perceiving it.” 

“ I think we are very kind to you 
all the year round,” returned Sue, 
giving my hand, which she still chafed 
in her own, a rather rebuking pat, 
“It is very carping of you to notice 
it if we are a little more attentive 
one month than another.’" 

“Well, don’t be nervous,” said I, 
trying to laugh. “ When the day 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


9S 


comes, you will not find me ’ absent 
from my bench of torment.” But at 
that they all burst upon me in full 
cry. "'Your bench of torment! Well, 
I do call that hypocrisy, mammy ! 
We always say that nobody enjoys 
a ball so much as you ; it is invari- 
ably we that have to drag you away, 
not you us.” 

I had not spirits to disclaim, 

"‘If I were you,” said Alice 
authoritatively ; “ I should just go 

straight back to bed and have some 
salvolatile and water.” 

“Or some white wine- whey,” sug- 
gested Ruth. 

“Yes, do,” said Susan, “and I will 
come and read you to sleep. You 
always say that my reading puts you 
to sleep faster than anyone’s.” 

“ That is a left-handed compliment, 
Sue,” said Alice, laughing, 

“ I know it is,” replied Sue, com- 


96 


BETTY'S VISIONS. 


posedly, “ but she does say so, don’t 
you, mammy 

“Will not you come now — at 
once ?” asked Alice, taking my other 
hand. “It would be far the wisest 
plan if you could get into a good 
perspiration ” 

But at that I found voice to inter- 
rupt her, rising suddenly from my 
chair, and flinging away the caresses 
of my too officious children. 

“I do not know what you would 
be at,” said I, indignantly. “ Quelle 
mouche vous pique ? What possesses 
you all with the idea that I am ill. 
Have I made any complaint ? though 
indeed, to have six gimlet eyes 
fastened upon your face, and three 
croaking voices in your ears, is 
enough to make you ill if anything 
is. For heaven’s sake disabuse your 
mind of this extraordinary fancy, and 
let us come to breakfast f * 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


97 


There was such unmistakeable exas- 
peration in my tone, that my children 
saw I was not to be trifled with, 

so, acquiescing in my proposition, 
they and I sat down to breakfast. 
But I caught them several times 
casting surreptitious glances at me to 
see whether I ate as usual, and 

whether or not I shivered aguishly 
in the chill with which they were so 
determined to credit me. To baulk 

them, I dodged behind the tea kettle, 
and tried to eat more heartily than 
my wont, in which, however, I was 
not very successful. Conversation was 
slack, which, to do us justice, it was 
not apt to be at our breakfast-table. 
Its present flagging condition was 

attributable, I imagine, partly to my 
supposed ill - health (my appearance 
must have beer, very much more 
deplorable than I had had any idea 
of), partly and chiefly to the absence 


98 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


of the master, always, when at home; 
the originator or fosterer of every 
joke, and who last night set off for 
Ireland, in which country he, for the 
punishment of his sins, possessed some 
landed estates. 

“Poor daddy!” said Alice, looking 
towards his vacant place. “He must 
have had a cold crossing last night. 
I woke at four this morning, when he 
must have been just halfway over, and 
thought, ‘ Poor daddy ! rather . you 
than 

“ I dreamed of him,” said Ruth — 
“ such an absurd dream. I dreamed 
we were giving a large party on the 
sly in his absence, and that he 
came back unexpectedly in the 
middle of it, like Sir Thomas Ber- 
tram in * Mansfield Park,’ and that 
we were all in such a fright. I woke 
just as I was trying to hide one 
of my partners between the legs of 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


99 


the billiard-room table — such a likely 
place to escape detection J” 

They all laughed. 

“And I,” said Sue, “slept so 
soundly that I never once thought 
or dreamt of him at all — rather 
brutal of me !” 

“ It is fortunate that one is not 
answerable for one’s dream-self,” said 
Ruth, recurring to the thought of her 
own dream ; “ one is sometimes such 
a rogue and sometimes such a booby 
in one’s dreams.” 

“ And you, mammy ?’* said Sue, 
amiably trying to draw me into the 
conversation, from which, since the 
beginning of breakfast, I had almost 
entirely excluded myself, “ what 
sort of a night had you ? The 
drunkard’s heavy slumbers” (laughing) 
“like mine ? Or pleasant and probable 
visions like Ruth’s ? Which ?” 

But I was prevented from re- 


TOO 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


plying to this question by the 
entrance of the butler, who came in 
to ask whether there were any orders 
for the coachman. 

** Surely not,” said Alice,” answer- 
ing for me. “ We shall be skating 
all the day, and you — you will not 
be so insane as to stir from the 
fireside !” 

I have always disliked being 
answered for. I have always known 
perfectly what my own opinions and 
wishes were, and have been fully able 
to express them. My eldest daughter’s 
growing tendency to reply for me 
had already on several previous 
occasions fidgetted me. After a 
moment s hesitation, I turned to the 
butler saying, “ There are no orders 
for him this morning ; if there are 
any for the afternoon I will let the 
coachman know at luncheon time.” 

Having thus established my authority 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


101 


I rose and left the room rather 
disagreeably conscious that the girls 
were whispering behind me. However, 
I suppose they saw that I was not 
in a humour to be trifled with, and 
wisely forbore from offering me any 
more of their extremely ill-received 
advice. By and bye I saw them all 
three setting gleefully off with their 
skates over their arms to the frozen 
mere, of which I could catch a 
glimpse — stiff among its stiffened 
sedges — between the brown limbs of 
the January trees. I watched them 
till their light figures, their tailor 
gowns and tight jackets, were quite 
out of sight, and then returned to 
the oak drawing-room in which I 
always spent my mornings. 

Here I at once found traces of 
that solicitous care for me on the 
part of my girls, which my ferocity 
had hindered them from expressing 

H 


102 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


in words. My favourite chair was 
drawn close up to the hearth ; every 
chink of window carefully closed — 
usually we were a madly open-air 
family. On a little table at my elbow 
stood a bottle of salvolatile, one of 
camphor, a small jug of hot water, 
and several lumps of sugar. I rang 
at once and had them all taken 
away. Then I sat down by the fire, 
and sat staring into it for the best 
part of an hour in entire idleness. 

I was not apt to be such a drone. 
Occupation I had always In plenty. 
What mother of a family and mistress 
of a house has not ? And, to do myself 
justice, I had ordinarily no inclination 
to slight my duties. But, on this par- 
ticular morning, I neither turned nor 
attempted to turn my hand to any 
one thing. I sat over the fire ; not 
even shivering or sneezing (for my 
children were on a wrong scent 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


103 


when they made up their obstinate 
young minds that I was threatened 
with influenza), occasionafly conscious 
that I was muttering to myself under 
my breath. At last, “ this will really 
not do,” said I, aloud ; pushing back 
my chair from the fire. “I do not 
know what has come to me. I hope 
that I am not going off my head.” 

So saying, I put my hand to my 
forehead, in which there was a dis- 
agreeable pulse beating, and walked 
to the window, An ugly, grinding, 
black frost, long, iron - bound bare 
borders, through which it seemed 
impossible that crocuses could ever 
push their gracious golden heads ; a 
sad robin, a chaffinch, and three 
sparrows, all hungry, and naturally 
silent, seeking on the gravel walk 
the poor remains of the crumbs 
thrown out at breakfast. There was 
nothing assuredly in the face of the 


104 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


outer world to put me in better 
spirits. But none the less did I 
continue aimlessly to gape at it. 
“ Shall I said I, under my breath ; 
“ anyone would say I was mad if 
I did, it would be the ne plus ultra 
of folly and irrationality ; if the girls 
heard of it, and of my reason, they 
would think I was ripe for Bedlam ; 
but — but it would be a relief! After 
all, I am mistress in my own house, 
why should not I ? I will.” I almost 
ran to the bell, and rang it sharply. 
But, in the interval between my 
having pulled it and the appearance 
of the servant who answered it, 
there was time for another change 
to come over my spirit. 

“ It is twelve miles if it is a step,” 
said I, internally ; “ the days are 

dark at four ; if I give way to 
these imaginings, I shall gradually 
become unfit for all the ordinarv 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 105 


duties of life : it may be an insidious 
form of hysteria.” 

The footman entered. 

** Some coals, please,” said I. 

I resumed my place by the fire, 
and took up some knitting. Turning 
the heel of a stocking requires some 
attention. It might absorb mine. In 
vain. My heel, or rather Ruth’s — I 
had rashly embarked upon hers — 
entirely failed to follow, even ap- 
proximately, the outline of the 
human foot, and I dropped it back 
into the work-basket. I picked up a 
novel. Alice had described it as 
breathlessly interesting, and, indeed, 
had sat up late over night to finish 
it, unable to tear herself away from 
its pages. I could not chain my 
mind even so far as to make ac- 
quaintance with its characters. I laid 
it, too, down. 

“ I believe the girls are right,” I 


io6 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


said. “ I must be ill ; this restless- 
ness must be the forerunner of some 
serious sickness.” 

I walked uneasily out of the room 
into the adjoining one, which, as we 
never sat in it except of an evening, 
looked unfriendly and formal by day- 
light ; then out into the hall, down a 
passage into the billiard-room. I had 
no motive for going there or any- 
where else, only I could not keep 
still. As my eye fell on the billiard- 
table, I remembered Ruths silly 
dream of having hid her admirer be- 
tween its legs. What an absurd 
dream ! All dreams are absurd ! I 
strayed back into the hall, and again 
looked through the window. The 
drive stretched away before me, dark- 
coloured between the whitened winter 
grass. “It would take an hour and 
three-quarters, driving at a good 
pace,” said I; “if I set off at two, 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


10 ? 


I should be there by a quarter-past 
three. I need not stay more than 
half-an-hour, and should be back here 
by half-past five. Pooh ! In the 
country that is a mere nothing. I 
will decide to go.” 

A second time I pulled the bell ; 
but a second time, before it was 
answered, half-a-dozen adverse reasons 
rushed into my mind and made me 
repent my resolution. The road, as 
far as I remembered it — for part of 
it I had travelled only once or twice 
in my life — was not a good one. 
The stables might be cold, and give 
the horses influenza, a pleasant piece 
of news with which to greet the 
master of the house on his return 
from Ireland. That last thought w^as 
conclusive, I would abandon the 
idea definitively. And meanwhile the 
footman had come in, and was look- 
ing expectantly at me. What could 


BETTY'S VISIONS. 


Jo8 

I be supposed to have rung for ? 
My fancy supplied no suggestion. 

“Never mind/’ said J, stupidly; 
“ it was a mistake ; it was nothing.” 

At the same moment the back 
door opened, and in came the three 
girls, bringing a whiff of frost, and 
buxom health and jollity with them, 
and still — as I vas not long in dis- 
covering — that baneful idea of my ill- 
health. 

“ Mammy, what are you thinking 
of.^ Out in the draught, away from 
the fire. Back, back, this instant I” 
“ Did you take the salvolatile 
asked the first, anxiously, 

“Did you try the camphor?” in- 
quired the second. 

“ Did )'ou see that we had put 
the sugar handy for you ?” asked the 
third. 

I saw all your kind remedies,” 
replied I, drily, “and I had them all 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


109 


at once removed. I see no reason 
why a perfectly healthy woman’s 
drawingTroom should be littered with 
physic bottles.” 

While I was speaking the gong 
sounded — for some reason, I forget 
what, we were lunching earlier than 
usual that day — at one. The girls 
scampered off 'to get ready. During 
our repast I do not think that I was 
much more loquacious than I had 
been at breakfast, hut my children 
made up for my silence by the 
volume of their chatter. Once or 
twice they asked me why I was 
looking out of the window, and what 
I expected to see there ? In point of 
fact, I was repenting of my repent- 
ance, but I need not say that I 
did not tell them so. Towards 
the middle of luncheon the butler 
again enquired, “ whether there were 
any orders for the coachman 


no 


BETTY'S VISIONS. 


“ Surely not,” said Alice, answering 
for me, ‘‘ the roads are like looking 
glass, and it Is beginning to snow 
even if you were well.” 

“Tell the coachman,” said I 
interrupting her with some tartness 
“ that I will have the brougham at 
twoT 

There was a moment of silent 
consternation among my little flock 

“ Then, if it is only Into Leighton 
that you want to go for any shopping,’ 
said Ruth, in a conciliatory voice^ 
“ could not you let us do it for 
you T 

“I am not going into Leighton,’ 
replied I, shortly. 

Another moment’s silence. 

“ Come, now, where are you going ?” 
cried Sue, getting up, coming over 
to, and kneeling down beside me, n 
order to try, as I knew, what 
personal wheedling — usually a very 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


Ill 


effective weapon in her hands — could 
do with me. 

“Why are you so mysterious T' 

“ I am not aware,” replied I, 
pompously, “ that I am answerable to 
my children for my goings out and 
comings in,” then, sinking into a 
less majestic tone, “ I have no ob- 
jection to telling you where I am 
going,” This was not quite true. 
“ I am going to call on Mrs. Smith.” 

“ Mrs. Smith !” 

“Mrs. Smith!'' 

“ What Mrs. Smith 

In three different keys of disap- 
proving astonishment. 

“ Mrs. Smith of Longmains.” 

“Why, you do not know her.” 

“ Why, it is twelve miles off.” 

“Why, daddy and Mr. Smith are 
not on speaking terms.” 

“ I beg your pardon,” replied I, 
gaining in firmness as I perceived 


XI2 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


the weight of opposition brought to 
bear upon me, “ I do know Mrs. 
Smith. I have no dislike to a long 
drive, and if the men of two 
families come to loggerheads, it is 
the more reason why the women 
should try to keep the peace.’* 

The girls gaped at me. 

But why to-day, in Heaven’s 

name ?” 

“ Why not to-day .^** 

It seemed as if the butler had 
taken upon himself to answer my 
question, for he had again entered 

the room and was speaking. 

“If you please, the coachman is 
very sorry, but the roads are like 
>^ice, and he has not had the horses 
roughed.’* 

I hesitated, 

“ That settles the question,** cries 
my eldest girl, triumphantly. 

“ Does it said I, toniced back 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 113 


into instantaneous decision. Let him 
send for the blacksmith at once to 
rough the carriage horses as quickly 
as he can. I must have the 
brougham as soon as it can be got 
ready, whatever the weather.” 

Servants never look surprised, and 
the girls were too angry with me, 
and I suppose thought me too great 
a fool to be worth spending any 
more breath upon, so I had no 
further remonstrances from them to 
battle with. 

It was past three o'clock, instead 
of two, before I started, but I did 
set ofi at last, i got my wayi 


SCENE IL 


I got my way, always a pleasant 
thing to do. But I think in this 
case the pleasantness inseparable from 
making one’s will override the wills 
of other people was reduced as low 
as it well could be. I was setting 
off on a raw winter afternoon, with 
a rising wind, falling barometer, and 
thickening snow, upon a twelve miles’ 
drive along a rutty road, to visit a 
woman whom — despite the stoutness 
of my assertions to the contrary to 
my children — I scarcely knew ; against 
whose husband mine had a rooted 
prejudice, and for bringing her into 
more intimate relations with whom I 
was well aware that he would be 
less than moderately grateful to me. 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


1^5 


Why, then, was I doing it ? This is 
the question that I am about to 
answer ; and when it is answered, 
you will probably think me an even 
greater fool than did my girls, who 
were ignorant that I had any reasons 
beyond native pigheadedness. 

It would be putting the amount 
of thought that I was apt to de- 
vote to Mrs. Smith far too high to 
say that I thought of her once a 
year. She had certainly never crossed 
my mind on the previous day. Why. 
then, was it that no sooner was I 
asleep last night than I was with 
her ? It would have seemed natural 
that I, who, during all my waking 
hours, had been occupied with my 
husband, his plans, his departure, his 
absence, his return, should, if I 
dreamed at all, . have dreamed of him. 
He never once crossed my brain. 
I had other absorbing subjects of 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


116 


interest ; an attachment of Sue’s, that 
I disapproved of, and over which I 
worried head and heart through many 
an anxious hour ; a budding taste 
for play in my eldest boy ; debts of 
his to be hidden from his father ; 
a wearing fear lest my excellent 
younger son should break down 
under the strain of his examination 
for the Indian Civil Service. 

Yes, I had a choice of nightmares 
in my stable, a row of skeletons 
in my closet, any one of which 
would, one might think, have fur- 
nished the stuff for my sleeping 
thoughts as they did unceasingly for 
my waking ones. Not at all ! I 
passed them all by, to dream wholly, 
connectedly, and with an astonishing 
vividness, of Mrs. Smith. 

I was with her in a room — a room 
I had never, to my knowledge, been 
in before ; presumably at Longmains, 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


117 


whose doors I had never entered. 
It was a room simply. No feature 
of it impressed itself with any dis- 
tinctness on my memory, as I have 
heard has often been the case in 
other vivid dreams. On reflection, I 
was not sure that I should know 
it again. Of one only fact in con- 
nection with it was I quite certain, 
and that was — that as we sat 
together at the fire, the door, the 
only door the room possessed, was 
on our left hand. 

We were sitting, as I say, to- 
gether by the fire. There was a 
clock on the mantel-piece, what kind 
of clock it was was dim to me ; 
but there was a clock, for I 
remembered hearing it tick. Mrs. 
Smith was sitting opposite to mep 
her back towards the door, facing 
which I was. I could see her 
features as plainly as 1 had done 


X 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


ii8 


Sues when she knelt beside me at 
luncheon, asking why I was so 
mysterious. I could not have be- 
lieved that I knew Mrs. Smith’s 
face so well ; her unimportant nose, 
her slightly indicated eyes, lustreless 
hair, and characterless figure. But 
out of some lumber-room of memory 
they must have started, conjured up 
by the strong spells of sleep. It 
was a perfectly connected, rational 
dream. I was I, and she was Mrs. 
Smith. She was not half Mrs. 
Smith and half somebody else. She 
did not suddenly, and without excit- 
ing any surprise in my mind — so 
eccentric are the laws of dreamland 
- — become metamorphosed into another 
person. She was, and continued to 
be, Mrs. Smith of Longmains. 

The one thing that clashed with 
probability was the fact of my being 
sitting tdte-d-t4te with Mrs. Smith in 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 119 

any room late at night, for somehow 
I knew that it was late at night. I 
do not remember looking at the 
clock, but I was by some means 
aware that such was the case. We 
were both working, and one of us 
had said something about its being 
twelve o’clock. This_ was followed 
by Mrs. Smith making an observa- 
tion which I had forgotten. I was 
sure that I had heard it perfectly at 
the time, for immediately on waking 
I had re-called it, but afterwards it 
had escaped me, and make what 
efforts I might, I was unable to re- 
capture it. After all, it was of 
no great consequence whether I 
remembered it or not. 

What I did remember with a 
startling distinctness was, that no 
sooner had she ceased speaking than 
there came a knock at the door. 
I remember thinking that it was an 


120 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


odd time of the night for anyone 
to knock at the door, but Mrs. 
Smith showed no surprise. She said, 
phlegmatically, “ Come in and the 
door opened at once and in walked 
the butler. For some strange dream- 
reason I could not see his face. It 
was all mist and blur to me. On 
waking, I felt sure that I should 
not be able to recognise him again. 
I was only conscious that he was a 
young man. He had a coal-box in 
his hand, and the next thing of 
which I was aware about him was 
that he was kneeling at the hearth 
making up the fire. Again it struck 
me that it was an odd time to 
choose to make up the fire. I had, 
as I tell you, for some reasonless 
reason, not seen his face, though it 
must have been turned towards me 
as he entered the room, but as he 
knelt at the fire I saw his back 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


I2I 


saw it so clearly that I felt that, 
stooping in the same attitude over 
the flame, I should recognise it 
among ten thousand. I saw it far 
more distinctly than, as I drove along, 
I saw the frozen pastures and the 
shivering sheep. 

Mrs. Smith had risen from her 
chair, and walked to the other side 
of the small room where she stood 
doing something — I did not know 
what — at a piece of furniture with 
drawers in it. I was not looking 
at her but at the man, and suddenly 
I found myself wondering what that 
was that I saw sticking up dimly 
visible out of his coat-tail pocket. 
As I wondered, I became aware 
that he was stealthily rising to his 
feet, and that his hand was cautiously 
travelling to his pocket in search of 
that very object which had arrested 
my attention. In another second, he 


122 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


had drawn it out — it was a revolver; 
had cocked it, aimed it at his mis- 
tress’s head and fired ! 

There was a thud, a horrible thud 
that I heard plainly even now as I 
drove along in my safe brougham, 
and I woke screaming so loudly that 
if anyone had been occupying a room 
near mine, they must have been 
awoke by the sound ; but as it 
happened, nobody was. The girls 
were separated from me by a long 
passage, and the servants were in an 
entirely different region. 

The dream had been so much 
more real than reality, that it must 
have been some minutes — it seemed 
to be hours — before my reason could 
assert itself enough to tell me which 
was which. I do not know how long 
it was before I at length summoned 
up resolution to strike a light, and, 
shaking with terror, so that I could 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 123 

Hardly hold the candle to get out of 
bed and examine the room for some 
indication of what could have been 
the cause of that dread, dull noise, 
which I could by no possibility be- 
lieve to have existed only in my 
imagination. I searched in vain. 
The windows were all securely 
fastened ; the door bolted, as I had 
left it over night. The pictures hung 
on the walls ; there was no brick 
fallen from the chimney on the hearth; 
not even a handful of soot or a 
starling’s nest. Nothing, nothing 
anywhere. 

I crept back to bed, still quiver- 
ing in every nerve. I must make 
up my mind that the whole thing 
had been the work of my own 
fancy, preternaturally alive in sleep.. 
Good Heavens ! Could the power of 
any imagination be adequate to pre- 
senting to me with the astounding 


124 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


vividness mine had done the figure 
of that man, kneeling with his back 
to me by the fire and stealing a 
covert hand to_, that coat pocket. I 
shut my eyes. Still I saw him, and 
with such distinctness, I felt that if I 
put out my hand I must touch him. 
I lit another candle, the more light 
the better. Still I saw him. 1 hid 

my head under the clothes. Still I 
saw him. The cold sweat stood on 
my forehead. I lay in an agony till 
daybreak ; and, when the ’ reassuring 
light began to creep in, I became a 
little more able to summon to my 

aid such reason as I was master of, 
to correct the hitherto overwhelming 
influence of that grisly vision. 

Several circumstances of improb- 
ability in the dream presented them- 
selves with some reassurance to my 

mind. The murderer, as seen by me, 

had been a young man. Now, I 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


*25 


happened accidentally to have learnt 
only lately that the Smiths possessed 
as butler an old family servant, who 
had lived with them over thirty years, 
and whom they were most unlikely 
to have parted with. Also, through- 
out the dream, I was conscious that 
but for servants, Mrs. Smith and I 
were alone in the house. Now, 
only yesterday, one of the girls 
had casually mentioned meeting Mr. 
Smith in Leighton. As the light 
broadened I dwelt with more and 
more confidence on these discrepancies, 
and was able to go down to break- 
fast presenting such a distant resem- 
blance to my usual self as I have 
described. 

But when left to myself after 
breakfast, with nothing to distract my 
thoughts and no appearances of 
equanimity to keep up, the vision 
returned upon me with almost its 
first force. 


125 


BETTY'S VISIONS. 


Again I saw that kneeling figure, 
that stealthy rising, that travelling of 
the hand to the coat pocket. I heard 
the click of that cocked revolver 1 I 
could not bear it. It mttst mean 
something 1 I must go to her. Must 
warn her. As you know, I rang the 
bell to order the carriage. But in 
the interval before it was answered, 
the vision passed ; reason, or what I 
supposed to be reason, re - asserted 
its sway, telling me how shadowy 
was the pretext upon which I was 
going to intrude upon this stranger; 
and how little my husband would 
thank me. 

This same thing was repeated 
more than once ; it was only Alice s 
triumphant “ That settles it !” which 
gave me the final impetus that 
enabled me to decide which of the 
two courses to adopt. Though, in- 
deed, I thought I must have gone 


MRS, SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


127 


in any case, I could not get that 
man’s kneeling back from before my 
eyes. I could not have faced another 
night alone in the dark with it. 

So now, reader, you know my 
reason for setting off at past three 
o’clock on a January afternoon, upon 
a twelve mile drive along a rutty 
road, with rising wind and thickening 
snow, to visit an almost entire 
stranger, whom my husband did not 
wish me to hold any communication 
with. Probably you think me as great 
a fool as the girls would have done, 
i was too much occupied with my 
own thoughts to notice the weather 
or the landscape much. I was worried 
with the stupid effort (which yet I 
could not help making) to recall that 
remark of Mrs. Smith’s which had 
immediately preceded the knock at 
the door in my dream. In vain ; no 
glimmering of it would recur to me. 


12S 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


I was Still cudgelling on my restive 
memory for it, when my attention 
was awakened by the carriage stop- 
ping and the footman appearing at 
the window. 

“If you please, the coachman is 
afraid he is not sure which of these 
roads he ought to take.” 

I put my head out. We were at 
three cross roads. 

“Why, there is a sign post!” said I, 
tartly. “Why do not you look at it 

“If you please, the names are all 
rubbed out.” 

Here the coachman leaned from 
his box to join in the conversation. 

“ The snow is coming on very 
thick, ma am ; I doubt our getting to 
Longmains to-night.” 

“At all events we will try,” replied 
I, with decision. “ Go slowly along 
whichever road you think looks most 
likely, until you pass a cottage, or 
some inn at which you can ask.” 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS, 


129 


I was obeyed. We moved slowly 
in a dismal uncertainty for some way ; 
in the waning light the figures of 
the two men, with their whitened hats 
and great-coats, grew indistinct. Then 
we stopped again. Praise Heaven, we 
had met someone ! I let down the 
glass to look and listen. Yes, there 
was a whitened countryman standing 
in the snow, being questioned. He 
was deaf, apparently ; and it was 
some time before he could be got to 
understand the drift of the interroga- 
tory addressed to him. 

When at length he did, I gathered 
from his words and gestures, as well 
as the w’ind would let me, the re- 
assuring information that we had 
come wrong. And, as ill-luck would 
have it, the road had narrowed so 
much that we had to go on for 
some distance before finding a place 
wide enough to enable us to turn. 


130 


BETTY S VISIONS. 


So that it must have been fully 
half-an-hour from the time of our 
first passing it, before we found our- 
selves once again at the finger-post : 
that blind leader of the blind. The 
dark had fully fallen before we found 
ourselves rolling noiselessly as snow 
could make us, over the cobble-stoned 
streets of a little country town. 

“ This must be Salcote,” said I 
to myself, “ I know that Salcote is 
their town. Courage ! We can’t be 
very far off now.” 

Let no one holloa before they are 
out of the wood ! 

This thought had scarcely passed 
through my mind before I was 
conscious of a jolt, severer than any 
that the snow - wrapped pavement of 
Salcote could inflict ; the carriage 
gave a sort of dip on one side ; 
In an instant the horses were pulled 
up on their haunches ; the footman 


MRS. SMITH OF LONG MAINS. 


131 


off the box and holding the carriage 
door open. 

“If you please, ma’am, you will have 
to get out, one of the wheels has 
come off.” 

I did not need a second bidding. 
In an instant I was out, standing in 
the snow, and peering with the help 
of Salcote’s dim street gas at one 
of the hind wheels, in order to 
verify my servant’s words. They were 
but too true. It had come off. 
Fortunately, in so doing, it had fallen, 
inwards, instead of outwards, in which 
latter case the carriage must, of 
course, have been overturned. I stared 
stupidly at it. Was this a judgment 
01 me for my pigheadedness What 
was to be done ? 

** Which is the best inn in the 
town?” asked I, addressing generally 
a group of gapers, which, snowball- 
like, had gathered round me and my 


BETTY'S VISIONS. 


132 


broken wheel Half-a-dozen voices 
instantly cried '‘White Hart” — as 
many dirty fingers pointed up the 
street, to where, about a hundred 
yards off, I could faintly see an old- 
fashioned sign hanging out. 

“ I suppose,” said I, disconsolately 
to the coachman, who was already be- 
ginning to unfasten the traces, “ that 
you will have to stay here for the 
night, I must go home in a fly.” 

As I spoke, I set off to walk to 
the White Hart, which I reached in 
about two minutes. 

“ My carriage has broken down,” 
said I as I entered, addressing the 
civil woman — landlady, I suppose — 
who came to meet me. “ I want a 
fly at once, please, as soon as it can 
be got ready. Have you one in ; a 
good fly ? I want a good fly at 
once, please,” repeating the words 
with an emphasis which I though 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


133 


must impress them upon my hearer. 
She assured me that she had, though, 
from the length of time that had 
elapsed before it appeared, I have 
since felt aitim tli.ir she had not 
spoken the truth, but had to wait in 
hope of the return of some vehicle 
now conveying another fare, and of 
some poor tired horse, destined 
through me to be baulked of his 
hard-earned feed. 

And as I sat waiting in the little 
inn parlour, my thoughts were not of 
the most complacent. Perhaps I had 
had enough of having my own will 
now! After all, I had better hence- 
forth submit tamely to Alice’s rule. 
I was clearly not fit to rule myself. 
Into what a stupid quandary had I 
brought myself, guided only by the 
Will-o’-th’-Wisp of a senseless dream. 
Well, the only rational course now 
left me to adopt was to return home 

K 


134 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


as quickly as possible, acknowledge 
my folly, submit, with what good 
humour I could muster, to the just 
laughter that folly would provoke, and 
resolve never to make such a fool 
of myself again. As I so resolved, a 
girl entered to poke the fire, and asked 
if I would like to take anything. I 
refused, and inquired how far they 
called it to Longmains. 

“To Longmains, maam? About 
three miles, ma’am ; not quite three 
miles, but it is not a good road.” 

She left the room again. Only 
three miles! To have come so near, 
and then turn back I Should I not 
turn back ? Should I go on ? As I 
hesitated, again I saw that kneeling 
figure stealthily rising, with its back- 
ward travelling hand. I looked round 
with a shiver. I wished the girl 
would come in again ; I wished that 
I was not alone in the room. I shut 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 135 

my eyes, and still before them was 
that kneeling figure. 

I must go on! I would go on! 
At the same moment the landlady 
entered to tell me that a fly was at 
the door, and I followed her out. 
There it stood, with the horse’s head 
— it was a dispirited, disappointed 
head, poor beast — turned towards my 
own home, and the footman holding 
the door open. I got in. 

“ Home, ma’am ?” asked he, touch- 
ing his hat, and evidently in no doubt 
as to the answer. 

No,” said I, desperately; “to 
Longmains.” 

For an instant ne looked staggered, 
as if doubting his own ears, then 
prepared to get on the box. 

“ Stay,” said I, “ you must not 
come with me ; you must find your 
own way home and tell the young 
ladies not to be alarmed however 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


136 

late it may be before I return. And 
tell him to go on and drive as quick 
as he can.*’ 

I was off ; we clattered with a 
spurious briskness until we had left 
behind us the streets of the little 
town. Then we dropped into a tired 
crawl in which we continued. The 
horse was evidently all but done. 
Ah ! but for me, he might have had 
his poor nose in his manger ! 

They certainly had not erred on 
the side of exaggeration who had 
told me that the road was not a 
good one. It was abominable. I was 
tossed up in the air and caught again 
a hundred times, like a cup and ball, 
by the monstrous ruts ; the fly smelt 
rampantly of straw, and fust, and 
worm-eaten cloth ; the piercing winds 
blew through it. If anyone in after 
time ever asked me what was the 
distance between Salcote and Long- 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


137 


mains, I always answered thirty miles. 
And I really believed it. 

At last, however, we stopped at a 
gate, the driver got down, there was 
no lodge, and after interminable 
fumbling he opened it, and we passed 
through. There were three more 
gates, at all of which he fumbled, 
so that when at last we drew up at 
a hall door I had the pleasure of 
hearing the hour of six told distinctly 
by several clocks within and without 
the house. 

What an hour at which to call, 
with a twelve miles drive home after- 
wards ! If a white-headed seneschal 
— obviously the confidential family 
servant of whom I had heard — ap- 
peared in answer to my ring, I would 
thrust in my card, and return whence 
I came, without asking to be ad- 
mitted. I waited breathlessly. It was 
some time before anyone appeared. 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


138 


Who, indeed, would be expected to 
arrive at such an hour ? At length 
there was a sound of steps, and of a 
turning handle. The door opened, 
and in the aperture appeared a man. 
Was he an old or a young one ? I 
craned my head out feverishly to 
ascertain. Young, obviously young. 
But perhaps he was a footman. 
Again I stared feverishly out. No, 
he was not in livery. He was a 
butler and he was a young man. 


SCENE III 


Mrs. Smith’s was not a face upon 
which I imagine as a rule any 

emotion painted itself with much 
vividness. It was a dull, flat, mask- 
like face ; but there was one feeling 

that upon my entry it showed itself 

at all events fully capable of pour- 
traying, and that was astonishment. 
I shall never forget the way in which 
her eyes and mouth opened as I 

sheepishly followed my own name into 
her drawing-room. She rose from a 
work-table at which she was sitting 
and advanced to meet me civilly 
enough, but all over her face was 
written such an obvious expectation 
of hearing from my lips some im- 
mediate explanation of this surprising 


140 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


visit, that not all the shock of the 
discovery that, in its first particular 
— that of the changed butler — my 
dream was fulfilled, could prevent my 
feeling covered with confusion at my 
own apparent intrusiveness. 

“ I am afraid this is rather a late 
hour at which to call,’' said I, con- 
strainedly — she tried to put in a faint 
disclaimer — “but the fact is I met 
with an accident on my way. My 
carriage broke down in Salcote — -some- 
thing went wrong with the axletree.” 

“ Indeed ! I am very sorry.’* Per- 
fectly politely, but still with that 
undisguisable look of astonishment and 
expected explanation. It must be 
remembered that she had been living 
twelve years in the neighbourhood, 
and that I had made no slightest 
attempt to visit her before. 

“And so I had to wait till a fly 
could be got ready, which threw me 
later still,” continued I, boldly. 


MAS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS.. 14! 


She again repeated. “Indeed!’ 
and that she was very sorry, adding 
that the Salcote flies were very bad 
ones. But I saw the puzzled look 
grow acuter, and I could follow the 
chain of thought that was running 
through her mind as plainly as if it 
had been written on a piece of paper 
before me. That my carriage should 
have broken down, and^ that yet I 
should have been so determinedly 
resolved to visit her as to push on 
in the teeth of circumstances in a 
mouldy fly at six o’clock at night, 
and on such a night, was the pro- 
blem, her total inability to solve 
which she was perfectly unable to 
disguise, nor could I help her. 

It was utterly impossible that I 
could tell her \yhat motive had brought 
me. Had she been another kind of 
woman I might possibly have con- 
fessed myself to her; but being such 


142 BETTY’S VISIONS. 

as she was, I felt that I had sooner 
be torn in pieces by wild horses. As 
we were toilsomely trying to keep up 
a conversation, rendered almost im- 
possible by our relative positions, the 
butler entered, bringing tea. As he 
set down the tray on the tea table I 
could not help stealing a sidelong 
glance at his face. It told me nothing. 
I had never, to my knowlege, seen 
it before, nor was it one that I should 
ever have noticed. But, then, neither 
had I seen the dream-face. It had 
been unaccountably hidden from me. 
As soon as he had left the room, I 
said abruptly, 

“So you have lost your old butler.** 

A fresh access of surprise overtook 
her, as I saw. How did I know 
lhat they had an old butler ? 

“Yes,” she answered, slowly; “we 
kepi him as long as we could, poor 
old man, because we were so fond oi 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


143 


him, but he grew so infirm at last 
that he had to go.” 

And your present one 
** Our present one ?” Repeating my 
words with a puzzled air. 

“Yes; do you like him? Had you 
a very good character with him 

Her eyes opened wide at my extra- 
ordinary curiosity. 

“Well, I am afraid that we were a 
little imprudent in his case. I am 
sure it is very good of you to take 
an interest in the matter.” (“For 
g‘ood, read impertinent , commented I, 
internally.) “But the fact is, that 
there seems to be a little mystery 
about the reason why he left his last 
place. However, Mr. Smith took a 
fancy to his appearance, and so we 
engaged him. But I do not know ” 
— formally — “ why I should trouble 
you with our domestic affairs.” 

I did not answer for a moment 


144 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


I was thinking with a sort of stupe- 
faction. They have taken him without 
a character ! Who knows what his 
antecedents were ? When I did speak 
it was with an apparently brusque 
change of subject. I myself knew the 
link that bound the two topics to- 
gether in my mind. 

‘‘ Mr. Smith is well, I hope ; at 
home 

“He was quite well when he left 
home this morning, thanks.” 

“Left home!” interrupted I, breath- 
lessly ; “he has left home 

“He was summoned away un- 
expectedly,” answered she, tranquilly ; 
“ but I expect him back to-morrow, 
or the day after, at latest.” 

“ Bui not to-night hurriedly. 

“ No, not to-night, certainly,” with 
her usual phlegm. 

At that moment the butler again 
entered, bringing coals — apparently 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 145 


Longmain’s did not boast a footman 
— and knelt down before the fire to 
put them on. - 

For a moment my eye fell on him; 
then I turned suddenly sick. Surely 
that was the very back, the very 
kneeling figure altogether that I had 
seen in my dreams ! I suppose I 
looked very odd, pale -and faint; for 
I found Mrs. Smith’s white eyes 
fixed upon me, and her voice asking 
me, “ Did I feel the fire too much.^” 
I stammered out a negative, and for 
some moments could do no more. 
At last the object that had excited 
my emotion being no longer in the 
room, I rose, driven by some inward 
power stronger than myself, and went 
towards Mrs. Smith. She, thinking 
that I meant to take leave, rose 
too. 

“I do not know whether your fly 
is at the door,” said she, “you had 
better let me ring and ask.” 


14 ^ 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


Her hand was on its way to the 
bell, but I arrested it. She had 
misunderstood my action in rising. I 
had not meant to go yet. But now 
she was virtually dismissing me. I 
must leave her. What pretext had I 
for further intrusion ? I had come 
twelve miles in the teeth of circum- 
stances ; I had seen and spoken with 
her, and now I was to leave her. 
What object had I then served by 
my wild freak ? I had not warned 
her ; I had given her no slightest 
hint of the peril that to my excited 
imagination seemed to hang im- 
minently over her. I had been of 
no least service to her ; and now I 
was leaving her — leaving her to her 
fate. 

It was impossible! It was equally 
impossible that I should expose my- 
self to her more than probable 
ridicule by telling her what had 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


147 


brought me ! I embraced a desperate 
resolution. I still held her hand, 
which I had seized to prevent her 
ringing the bell. I was so agitated 
that I was hardly aware that it was 
in my clasp, until her* face of pro- 
found astonishment, almost alarm, 
betrayed the fact to me. 

I do not know what you will 
think of me,” said I, in a shaking 
voice ; “ but I’m going to make what 
I am afraid you will think a very 
extraordinary request to you.” 

“ Indeed !” said she, with a per- 
ceptible accent of distrust and a 
decided drawing away of the hand so 
convulsively clasped by me. 

Yes,” said I, going on with feverish 
haste, now that the ice was once 
broken, “you see it has happened so 
unfortunately, the distance was greater 
than I expected, and then the axle- 
tree breaking, and the poor fly- 


BETry’S VISIONS. 


I4S 

horse is so done that I am sure he 
could not crawl another mile ; in 
short, I am afraid I must throw my* 
self upon your hospitality, and ask 
you to give me shelter ; to let me 
stay here for the night.’* 

Out it had come, and now it only 
remained to be seen bow she would 
take my proposition. At first she was 
too dumb-foundered to utter. I saw at 
once that the idea of my being de- 
ranged crossed her mind ; for she 
looked hard at, and at the same time 
backed away from me. Then her 
civility revived. 

“ Of course !” she said, “ of course, 
I shall be only too delighted !” and 
then she stopped again. 

I saw that, having gained my point, 
my next task was to convince her of my 
sanity. I, therefore, with profuse thanks 
and apologies, and as composed a voice 
as I could master, asked leave to send 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


149 


my orders by the flyman back to my 
coachman at Salcote. I took care 
that she should hear me give them 
myself to the man, so that she might 
know that the broken axle-tree and 
disabled brougham were not figments 
of my own diseased imagination. But 
I do not think that this measure had 
much effect in removing the suspicion 
of my insanity from my hostess’s mind. 
I had gone out to the hall door to 
speak to the flyman, whence we both 
returned to the drawing - room to 
begin our sixteen or eighteen hours 
tHe-d-tHe, 

I think that both our hearts sank to 
our boots at the prospect. I am sure 
that mine did. In order, perhaps, to 
abridge it as much as possible, Mrs. 
Smith soon left me, with some mur- 
mured sentence about seeing that my 
room was comfortable, which it cer- 
tainly was not. It was, on the 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


150 

contrary, as I found on being led to 
it, as uncomfortable as a hastily got- 
ready bed-room, with a just-lit fire, 
and a sensation of not having been 
occupied for some indefinite time past, 
would naturally be on a biting January 
night. 

Having taken off my bonnet, and 
made myself as tidy as I could with 
the aid of Mrs. Smith’s brush and 
comb, and told myself repeatedly that 
the world had never seen such a fool 
as me, and that neither the girls nor 
my husband would ever forgive me, 
I went downstairs, and we presently 
betook ourselves to dinner. There 
we sat opposite to each other in 
tHe-d-tHe, I had faintly hoped that 
some female friend, old governess, or 
cousin might crop up to make a 
third with us. But no ; there we 
were, we two ! We were waited on 
by the butler, and by him alone. 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 151 

By questions, whose impertinence 
Mrs. Smith must have thought only 
palliated by the unsound state of my 
mind, I ascertained that the Smith 
establishment in its normal state con- 
sisted of butler and footman, but that 
the footman had, two days ago, been 
suddenly taken ill and sent home. The 
butler was therefore now, in his master’s 
absence, the only man in the house. 
I also ascertained, during one of his 
absences from the room, that the 
stables were at an inconveniently long 
distance from the house, and that 
there was no cottage nearer than a 
quarter of a mile off. Altogether, 
as lonely a spot as you would wish 
to see. My eyes travelled uncom- 
fortably and furtively after the man 
on his return into the room, but I 
could see nothing in his appearance 
to justify my terrors. His face had 
no specially sinister cast It was 


*52 


BETTY'S VISIONS. 


almost as insignificant as his mistress’s. 
And his figure ! Could it be possible 
that the startling resemblance I had 
traced in it to my dream-figure was 
only the figment of my horrified 
fancy ? 

But no ! no ! a hundred times no ! 
As I watched the butler, in precisely 
the same furtively apprehensive way, 
I was conscious that Mrs. Smith was 
watching me. Her slow brain had 
adopted and clung fast to the belief 
that I was mad ; nor, indeed, was 
that conviction devoid of a good deal 
of justification. I think that she 
would not have been at all surprised 
if I had at any moment risen, and 
playfully buried the carving-knife in 
her breast. I have often thought 
since what a pleasant dinner she must 
have had. It was over at last 
It had seemed enormously long, and 
yet on our return to the drawing- 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


153 


room it proved to have been dis- 
astrously short ; short as women’s 
dinners always are. We had dined 
at eight, and it was only five-and- 
twenty minutes to nine. Three hours 
and five-and-twenty minutes until the 
period indicated in my dream. 

We sat down dejectedly on each 
side of the fire. I noticed, almost 
with a smile, that Mrs. Smith took 
care not to place herself too near me. 
We had long exhausted our few poor 
topics of common talk. I had not 
even any more impertinent questions 
to ask. It is true that after having 
run, as we both thought, quite dry 
already, we had had the good fortune 
to happen upon a common acquaint- 
ance. Very slightly as she was 

known to either of us, with what 
tenacity did v/e cleave to that poor 
woman ! How we dissected her 
character ; anatomised her clothes ; 


*54 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


criticised her actions ; enumerated her 
vices ; speculated on her motives ; 
about none or all of which we either 
of us knew or cared a button. 

But at last she was picked to the 
bone, and bare naked silence stared 
us in the face. What a dreadful 
evening it was ; saved, to me at 
least, from the simplicity of bottom- 
less tedium by alternate rushes of 
burning shame and icy apprehension. 
At ten o’clock Mrs. Smith could bear 
it no longer. She rose and rang for 
candles. 

“ I daresay that you will not be 
sorry to go to bed,” she said, a sort 
of relief coming into her tone. 

I believe she nourished a secret 
intention of locking me into my room 
when once she had got me there. 

“ After your long drive you will 
be glad of rest.” 

“ And will you too ?” asked I, 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 155 

Stupidly, for she had had no long 
drive. ‘‘ I mean are you also going 
to bed ?” She hesitated. 

“It would not be much use my 
going to bed so . early ; I am a bad 
sleeper.” 

“You are not going to bed, then 

“ Not just yet.” 

“You are going to stay here — in 
this room, I mean ? 

“ No, I am going to my boudoir.” 

A cold shiver ran down me. Her 
boudoir! That was the room we were 
sitting in in my dream. There was a 
moment’s pause. 

“ I wonder,” said I, with a nervous 
laugh, and in a voice whose agitation 
I could but partially control, “ whether 
you would let me come with you. 
I — I — am not at all sleepy, after all ; 
it — it is so very early, is not it ? 
I — I — should like to see your boudoir, 
may I ? 


56 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


Polite woman as Mrs. Smith was, 
and had proved herself to be to-night, 
she could not prevent a flash of acute 
annoyance, mixed, as I saw, with fear, 
from crossing her face. 

“It really is not at all worth see- 
ing,’’ replied she, stiffly ; “ and I can- 
not help thinking that you look 
tired.” 

“But I am not, at all,” rejoined I, 
obstinately. “ I should like to come 
with you, if you would let me.” 

“ Of course, if you wish it,” said 
she, grudgingly. 

Before finally succumbing, she made 
one or two more efforts to shake me 
off In vain ! I was quite immov- 
able. I heard her give an irrepres- 
sible sigh of impatience and appre- 
hension at my unaccountable and 
offensive pertinacity as she preceded 
me upstairs. We reached her boudoir. 
It was a common-place room, common' 


MRS. SMITH OF LONi^MAINS. 


157 


placely arranged. I had seen hun- 
dreds like it, but never to my 
knowledge, either in waking or 
sleeping, had my eyes made acquain- 
tance with it before^ I looked at 
once upon entering to see whether 
the relative position of door and 
fire-place were the same as those seen 
in my dream, and also whether there 
was a clock on the chimney-piece. 
In both particulars my vision had told 
me correctly. But, after all, there was 
nothing very remarkable in this* 
Most rooms boast a clock, and in 
many the door is on the left hand of 
tne fire-place. But, to me, it seemed 
confirmation strong as Holy Writ. 

“ I told you that there was nothing 
to see here,” said my hostess, noting 
my eye wandering round, and speak- 
ino- in a tone out of Vvhich she 

o 

could not keep all the resentment she 
felt. 


158 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


“ But it — it is very — very comfort- 
able !” rejoined I, hastily fearing that 
this was the prelude to a curt dis- 
missal of me. “ I should like to stay 
here a bit with you, if I might.” 

She made some sort of murmured 
sound, which might mean acquiesc- 
ence, and we sat down. This time 
we did not even attempt any 
conversation. She occupied herself 
with some work that apparently re- 
quired a great deal of counting ; and 
I — I had no other occupation but 
my thoughts. I could not well have 
had a worse one. As I sat there, in 
silence, listening with ears continually 
strained to catch some sound that 
was not swallowed up in the shutter- 
shaking of the storm-wind, with e^es 
perpetually travelling to the clock- 
face, I asked myself over and over 
again what purpose I hoped to serve, 
by this apparently so insane procedure 
of mine ? 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS, 


159 


Were the dream to prove a fallacy, 
I had made as great a fool of my- 
self as the world — fertile in that pro- 
duct — had ever seen. If, on the 
other hand, the dream, hitherto proved 
curiously true in some slight particu- 
lars, were to be carried out in its terrible 
main features, of what avail could I 
suppose my presence to be in averting 
the catastrophe with which it concluded. 
All I had done was to involve myself 
in Mrs. Smith’s fate, which there 
could be no doubt about my sharing. 
Again that cold shudder ran over 
me. I could not help breaking the 
silence to ask my companion whether 
she never felt it a little eerie, sitting 
up here all alone so late at night ?” 

She answered briefly, “ I am not 
nervous.” 

Do you never even take the pre 
caution of locking the door ?” asked 
I, glancing nervously towards it. 


i6o 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


She smiled rather contemptuously. 

“ Never ; and even if I wished I 
should be unable, as I see, what I 
never noticed before, .that the lock is 
broken.’’ 

The clock struck eleven. One hour 
more ! It passed, too, that last hour. 
It was endless, an eternity, yet it 
rushed. As it 'drew towards its last 
sands I hardly breathed. If Mrs. 
Smith had once looked up from the 
stitching at which she was so tran- 
quilly pegging aw'ay, she must have 
seen the agitation under which I w^as 
labouring, and would of course have 
at once assigned it to her old count 
of insanity. I w^ondered that she did 
not hear the thundering of my heart, 
pulsing so loudly as to impede that 
intensity of listening into which all my 
pow’ers seemed to have passed. 

How near it was growing ! Five 
minutes, four minutes, three minutes. 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


i6i 


two minutes, one minute. I held my 
breath. I clenched my hands till the 
nails dug into the palms. Tw^elve ! 
The clock struck ! With that ringing- 
in my head, with that hammering 
heart, should I hear the knock, even 
if it came ? Mrs. Smith made some 
slight movement, and I almost shrieked, 
but I bit in the scream, and listened 
again. One mimite past ; two minutes 
past ; three ; four ; up to tw^elve ! 
The clock said twelve minutes past 
tw^elve. As each minute went by, I 
drew a longer breath, and my tense 
nerves slackened. At the twelve 
minutes past Mrs. Smith looked up — 

“ Do you feel inclined to go to bed 
yet she enquired. “ I am afraid 
(looking more attentively at me) “ that 
you are more tired than you will allow.” 

“ I think I will go,” said I, rising 
and drawing a long breath ; “it is 
ten minutes past twelve.” 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


162 


“ Not quite that/' rejoined she ; 
“ that clock is ten minutes fast. I 
must have it regulated to-morrow.” 

“ / must have it regulated to- 
moi'7'ow r Like lightning it flashed 
upon me that that was the speech 
Mrs. Smith had made in my dream 
immediately before the knock came. 
The speech I had made such vain 
efforts to recall. And, as panic-struck, 
this dawned upon me, someone 
knocked. A mist swam before my 
eyes. I tried to speak, but no words 
would come, and Mrs. Smith ap- 
parently did not see the agonised 
hand I stretched out towards her.” 

“ Come in, she said, phlegmatically. 
The door opened, and in the aper- 
ture appeared the figure of the butler, 
with a coal-box in his hand. My 
horror-struck eyes were rivetted on 
him, but I could not stir hand or 
foot. To what purpose if I had } 


. MRS. SMITPI OF LONGMAINS. 163 


Were not we alone in the house with 
him — we two wretched, defenceless 
women ? 

Mrs. Smith had, as in my dream, 
moved to the other side of the room, 
to the piece of furniture with drawers 
at which I had seen her standing. 
Then she looked over her shoulder 
and said, composedly, “ Thank you, 
Harris ; we do not want any more 
coal to-night.” Then, as he seemed, 
or seemed to me, to hesitate, she 
added quietly, “ I shall not require 
anything more to-night ; you may go 
to bed.” 

Could I believe my eyes ? Was he 
really retreating ; shutting the door 
after him ? Were those his footsteps, 
whose lessening sound I heard along 
the passage ? For a moment every- 
thing grew dark before me. I clutched 
the arms of my chair, to assure 
myself that this was reality and no 


i64 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


dream. Then I staggered to my feet, 
and towards Mrs. Smith. 

“Is he gone.^” asked I, in a hoarse 
whisper. 

“Gone!” repeated she, in astonish- 
ment, all her old doubts as to my 
soundness of mind rushing back in 
flood. “Yes, of course he is gone I 
Why not ?” 

“ And he will not come back ?” 
still in that husky whisper. 

“ Of course not. I told him I 
needed nothing more to - night. I 
think” — eyeing me distressfully — “ that 
you really had better go to bed ; 
you seem a little — a little — feverish 1” 

“ Yes,” said I, making an effort to 
recover some decent amount of com- 
posure, “ perhaps I am ; I will go to 
bed if you are quite — quite sure — ” 

She looked so really alarmed at my 
manner and words that I did not 
finish my sentence. 1 followed her, 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 165 


Still shaking in every limb, to my 
bed-room, when she left me ; and into 
which, I am almost certain, though 
she tried to do it as noiselessly as 
possible, that she locked me. For 
hours after she left me I remained, 
sunk in the armchair by the fire, 
into which I had almost fallen on 
entering. I still shook as if ague- 
struck, and every now and again I 
held my breath to listen — to listen 
for that stealthy step which even 
now I felt must come ; — for the noise 
of that awful thud which still sounded 
so loudly in the ears of my imagi- 
nation that I could not even yet 
believe that it neither had, nor ever 
would have, any echo in a real sound. 

At length I dropped into an uneasy 
doze, from which I was awoke by a 
sensation of extreme cold, to find the 
fire black out and the temperature of 
the room at or below freezing point. 


M 


i66 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


I rose and threw myself, dressed, 
upon the bed, and, wrapping myself 
in a fur cloak, fell into a heavy sleep, 
from which I was only roused by the 
eight o’clock entry of the housemaid. 

On first opening my bewildered eyes 
I could not recollect where I was, 
but stared round wonderingly at the 
unfamiliar room. Then recollection 
came upon me with a rush, and I 
buried my face in the pillow. Oh, 
why had I ever woke again ? Why 
had day ever had the inhumanity to 
dawn again upon such a candidate for 
Earls wood ? As the details of the 
previous day’s incidents came back 
upon me with brutal vividness, I called 
to the rocks to fall upon me and the 
mountains to cover me ! 

Had anyone since the world first 
began, ever written themselves down so 
egregious an ass ? Befooled by an 
idiotic dream ; misled by a tancied 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


167 


resemblance of trivial circumstances . 
floundering deeper and deeper into the 
quagmire of unreason, which had 
landed me at last, fully dressed, on this 
strange bed, and with the appalling 
prospect before me of having to go 
down and meet Mrs. Smith at break- 
fast. 

She would probably and wisely 
meet me with a lunatic asylum-keeper 
and a strait waistcoat. And my chil- 
dren, my servants, my husband, how 
should I ever look any one of them 
in the face again ? I writhed. But 
writhing did not help me. I had 
seen the housemaid’s astonished glance 
at my full-dressed condition, a fresh 
proof of my insanity, which would, 
no doubt, be conveyed to Mrs. 
Smith. 

1 must get up. I must go down 
and appear as soon as I could. That 
was all that was now left me. And 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


i6S 


that much I did. With what inward 
grovelling, mentally though not appa- 
rently on all fours, I entered that dining- 
room will never be known save only 
to myself. She came to meet me, 
civil, dull, unemotional ; though I 
thought I ^ caught a look of lurking 
apprehension still in her eye. 

Stupid woman ! Why could not 
she have been shot through the head, 
and fallen with that thud I had ex- 
pected of her ? I felt a sort of anger 
against her for standing there so stolid 
and sound after having wrought me 
such irremediable woe. 

Oh, that breakfast ! Shall I ever 
forget it ? How did I live through 
it ; through it and the moments that 
followed it, and the leave-taking ? 
At the latter I do not think that I 
said anything. My tongue clave to 
the roof of my mouth. I had just 
sense left to give her my hand 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 169 

Stupidly, and to notice the look of 
scarcely subdued joy and relief on her 
face at seeing the last of me. 

She sent me in her carriage as far 
as Salcote, which I thought she looked 
upon as the surest method of being 
rid of me. At Salcote I got into 
my own brougham, and returned home 
a sadder, if not a wiser, woman. 
Reader, will you despise me very 
much if I tell you that I cried the 
whole way, and that on reaching 
my own fireside I gathered my child- 
ren about me and made a clear 
breast of my folly to them ? They 
took my confession characteristically. 

Alice said that if I had taken her 
advice I should have been spared a 
great annoyance. 

Ruth said that all dreams were 
nonsense, and reverted to her own 
puerile one, which even at that 
moment of humiliation I felt wounded 
at having paralleled with mine. 


170 


BETTY’S VISIONS 


And Sue, dear Sue, held both my 
hands fast in hers, and said she should 
have done precisely the same in my 
case. 

But I refused to be comforted, the 
more so as it turned out that the most 
valuable of the carnage horses had 
caught in the cold White Hart stables 
an influenza which was rapidly develop- 
ing into inflammation of the lungs. 
But even without that final straw I 
had sunk ho^jelessiy in my own 
esteem. 


POSTSCRIPT. 


Just a year later the public was 
shocked by the account of a murder 
which, in its circumstances, exceeded 
the measure of brutality usually con- 
nected with such crimes. 

It was the murder of a lonely old 
maiden lady by her butler — a butler 
to whom, as it appeared, she had 
been in the habit of showing excep- 
tional kindness. 

I read the account with about the 
same degree of shuddering disgust, I 
suppose, as my neighbours ; but with- 
out any feeling of a personal character 
until it transpired, in the course of the 
evidence, that the murderer’s name 
was Harris — a name by which I had 
once, and once only, heard Mrs. Smith 
of Longmains address her butler. 


172 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


I dismissed the thought at once as 
far as I was able. Had not I had 
enough of giving the reins to my 
imagination ? Was not Harris an ex- 
tremely common name, almost as 
common as Smith ? But when the 
trial came on, which, as the crime had 
been committed shortly before the 
Assizes, it did very soon after the 
committal to prison, I, perhaps, un- 
known almost to myself, followed it 
with a keener interest than, but for 
this trifling circumstance, I should 
have done. 

The trial v/as a short one ; the 
evidence overwhelming ; the man 
found guilty, condemned and executed, 
without any sentimentalist being found 
to. petition the Home Secretary in his 
favour. 

On the evening before his execution 
he made to the Gaol Chaplain a full 
confession of his crime ; and not only 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 173 


of that one which brought him to 
the gallows, but of a previous one 
which he had been prevented from 
carrying beyond the stage of intention 
bv a curious accident. What that 
curious accident was you shall hear, 
and judge of my feelings on reading 
the following extract from the mur- 
derer’s confession : — 

“ In January of ^ast ^ was 

living in the service of Mr. Smith 
of Longmains. I was at very low 
water at the time, over head and 
ears in debt, and did not know where 
to turn for money which I wanted des- 
perately and felt that I must obtain 
by fair means or foul. My chief in- 
ducement for entering Mr. Smith’s 
service had been that I had acci- 
dentally heard that he was in the habit 
of keeping considerable sums of money 
in the house, for the purpose of pay- 
ing the weekly wages of the work- 


174 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


men employed upon some extensive 
drainage works which he had under- 
taken. 

“ I thought, on reaching Longmains, 
that I had never seen a house better 
adapted to my purpose. It was as 
lonely a spot as I have ever seen ; 
the stables at an unusual distance 
from the hall, and no dwelling-house 
within less than a quarter of a mile. 
The establishment consisted, as to 
men, of myself and one footman ; 
but about a week after my arrival 
the footman fell ill, and had to be 
sent home. 

“ I had not yet matured my plans, 
though I had ascertained that Mr. 
Smith kept his money in a strong 
box in his business room, and that 
in the case of his absence, Mrs. 
Smith had charge of the key, when 
one morning my master was unex- 
pectedly summoned from home, leaving 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 


175 


me alone with my mistress and the 
female servants in the house. 

“ Such an opportunity, which, very 
probably, might not soon occur again, 
was, I felt, not to be lost. Mrs. 
Smith’s habits were such as to favour 
my project. She usually sat in her 
boudoir, situated in a rather isolated 
part of the house, until late at night. 
I made up my mind to wait until 
the rest of the household had retired, 
and then to go to Mrs. Smith’s boudoir 
on the pretext of taking coals for the 
fire, obtain from her the key of the 
strong box, by fair means if possible ; 
but if she resisted — and she was a 
resolute woman — I had determined to 
shoot her through the head, having 
provided myself with a revolver for 
the purpose ; furnish myself with as 
much money as I could get hold of, 
and make tracks for America. I 
was prevented from carrying out this 


176 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


intention by a very unlooked for 
accident. 

“ Late in the afternoon of that day 
— the weather was extremely bad, 
snov/ing hard, with a high wind and 
bitter cold — a lady arrived in a fly to 
call on my mistress. I could see that 
my mistress was greatly surprised when 
1 took in the lady’s card ; for, as far 
as I could make out, she was very 
slightly acquainted with her and lived 
a matter of twenty miles off. 

“ I have never to this day made out 
why she came. We ail thought she 
was off her head, and I believe she 
was. My mistress certainly thought so, 
all the more when she asked leave to 
stay the night. I could see that my 
mistress was very much annoyed, and 
rather alarmed, but as the lady would 
not go, there was no help for it ; stay 
she must. 

I was a good deal upset at first, 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAIx^JS. 177 




as i was airaid her being there would 
knock my plan on the head, but after- 
wards I comforted myself with the 

thougl'it that she would be sure to go 
to bed early, tired with her long drive, 
and I should find Mrs. Smith alone in 
her boudoir. 

“I lit them their bed room candles 
in the drawing - room at ten, and then 
went off to wait. 1 would not risk it 
till twelve. By that time everyone 
would be sure to be in bed and 

asleep. I thought 1 never had known 
time go so slowly, but at last the 

clock pointed to five minutes to 

twelve. I put my revolver in my 
pocl^t, took up the coal-box, went 
up stairs, and knocked. Mrs. Smith’s 
voice said “ Come in,” and I opened 
the door. 

“ What was my horror to find the 
strange lady still sitting there with my 
mistress ? The sight of her took 


178 


BETTY’S VISIONS. 


me so aback that 1 did not know 
whether to come in or not, and as I 
was hesitating, Mrs. Smith said, ‘ We 
do not want any more coals ; you 
may go to bed, Harris,’ or something 
like that. And all the while the 
strange lady was staring at me so 
oddly, as white as a ghost, that I 
began to think she must have some- 
how found out what I was after. 
Her being there and her looking at 
me like that, altogether made me feel 
so queer that I actually shut the door 
and went away again. I thought I 
would put it off till next night. 
But on the following day Mr. Smith 
returned, and I never had another 
chance !” 

I had no sooner reached this last 
word than I rose to my feet. I was 
certainly a yard taller than when I 
sat down. 

“ Girls !” said I, calling to them in 


MRS. SMITH OF LONGMAINS. 179 


a voice of solemn authority, and as 
they gathered rounds Be so good as 
to read those paragraphs/* pointing to 
them with my finger. I watched their 
faces as they did so, and when they 
had finished, I said, turning to Alice, 
in a voice of more than mortal dignity, 
'‘You see that wisdom is justified of 
her child !’* 

I was interrupted by the door open- 
ing and a lady rushing past the 
footman to precipitate herself into my 
arms. It was Mrs. Smith of Long- 
mains come to thank me for having 
saved her life, and to apologise with 
tears for having ever thought me ripe 
for Bedlam. 


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Portia, or By Passions Rocked, 

Phyllis, 

Molly Bawn, 

Airy Fairy Lillian, 

Mrs. Geoffrey, Etc., Etc. 


The works by The ^)uchess have passed, and far passed, all 
competitors in the race for popularity and admirers. Edition? 
after editions have rapidly succeeded each other, both in England 
and this Country, and it is an interesting fact (to the publishers) 
to know that the supply does not equal the demand. Select and 
read any one of the above, and you will not be happy till you have 
read them all. It would bo of little use giving extracts from the 
thousands of eulogistic press criticisms. Your only plan is to 
buy one, and be convinced that the Novels by The Duchess are 
the most intensely interesting light reading written for many a 
year. 

For sale by all booksellers and newsdealers, or sent postage paid 
on receipt of price, by the publishera. 

JOHN W. LOVELL CO.. 

14 AND IG Vesey Street, 

New Yore. 


A QUAINT LITERARY CREATION ! 


GRANDFATHER LIGKSHINGL 

And Other Sketches. 


By K. W. CRISWELL, of the Cincinnati Enquirer. 
Author of “ The New Shakespeare” and Other Travesties. 

A Y0LU3IE OF GENUINE HUJUOR ! 

1 Yol., 12mo., cloth, gilt, - - - - $1.00 

1 “ paper, - .50 

Also in Lovell’s Library, 1 vol . . - . .20 


“ Has made a wide reputation as a humorist.” — Brooklyn Eagle. 

“ One of the acknowledged humorists of the day.” — N. Y. Mail 
■ and E'l'press. 

“ Has acquired a national fame.” — TJtica Observer. 

“ Ilis humor is as natural as sunlight.” — Bolt. J. Burdette. 

“Won a national reputation.” — Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette. 

“ One of the brightest writers of the day.” — Burlington Ilaukcye. 

“ lias taken and held a place in the front rank.” — N. Y. Truth. 

“There has been no brighter writer on the American press in 
the past fifteen years.” — Elmira Advertiser. 

“ Mr. Criswell’s writings are thoroughly original.” — Bloomington 
Eye. 

“ A reputation enjoyed by few of his age.” — Bradford Star. 

“Ilis humor is quaint and scholarly.” — Cincinnati Catholic 
Telegraph. 

“ lie imitates nobody.” — New York Sun, 

“lias made a world-wide reputation.” — Louisville Courier^ 
Journal. 

JOHN W. LOVELL CO., Publishers, 

14 & 16 Vesey St., New York, 



LOVELL’S 


LIBRARY. 


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Border Beagles, by W. G-, Simms.. SO 
The Shadow of a Sin, B. M. Clay.. 10 
Wedded and Parted, by B. M. Clay.lO 
. he Masier of the Aline, Buchanan. 10 

3 he Forayer.-J, by Simms.. oO 

The MLs'letoo Bough, Al. E. Braddon.20 
Sell or Bearer, Walter Besant ...10 

in Cnpiirs Net, by B. AI. Chp; 10 

Lady DanicFs Secret, B. AI. Clay.. 20 

Charleinant, by W. G. Simms 30 

Entaw, b^^ \V. G. Simms 30 

Evolution, Rev. C. F. Deems, D.D.20 
Beauchainpe, by \V. G. Simms.... 30 

No. 00, by Arthur Griffiths 10 

Fors Ciavigera, by Raskin. P’t I. 30 
Furs Ciavigera, by Raskin. P't II.. 30 
Woman against Woman, by Holmes. 20 
Picciola, by J. X. B. Suintine. , . , ,10 
Undine, by Baron de la Alotte 

Fouque lO 

Wo^nan, by Atigust Bebel 30 

Fors Ciavigera, by Raskin, P’c 111.30 
Fors Ciavigera, by Riukin, P't IV. SO 
A Cardinal Sin, by Hugh Conway. 20 
A Crimson Stain, Annie Bradshaw. 20 
A0oantryGeutleman,Mrs.Oliphant.20 

A Gilded Sin, by B. AI. Clay 10 

Rory O'Alore, by Samuel Lover...- 20 
Between Two Love.s, B. IT. Clay. ,.20 
Lady Branksmerc, by The Duchess. 20 
The Evil Genius, by Wilkie Collin8,20 
Ruu.ning the Gauntlet, by Yates. . .20 
Broken to Harness, Edmund A'atos.20 
l)i\ WiiineFs Love, Altrgnret Lee.. 25 
Austin Eliot, by Ib-nry Kingsley.. 20 
For AimtheFs Sin, by B. AI. Clay.. 20 
The 11 llyarsand Burton.s, K ngsiey 20 

In Prison and Out, by Strelton 20 

Romance of a Young Girl, by Clay.20 

Leighton Court, by Kingsley 20 

Victory Deane, by Cecil Griffith. 20 
A Q teen amongst Women, by Ciay.lO 

Vineta, by E. Werner 20 

A Alontal ScruggU^, The Duche'S,,20 
Geoffrey ITamlyn, by H. Kingdcy. 30 
The Haunted Chamber, “Duchess’MO 

A Golden Dawn, by B. AI. Clay 10 

Like no Other Love, by B. M. Clay.lO 
A B.tter Atonement, by B. AI. Clay.20 
Loriuierand Wife, by Alargaret Lee. 20 
Social Solutions No. 1, by Howland. 10 
A W man’s Vengeance, by Holmes. 20 

Evelyn's Folly, by B. AI. CUiy 20 

Living or Dead, by Hugh Conwa3\.20 
Bca'oirs Bargain, Airs. Alexander.. 20 
Social Solutions, No. 2, by Howland. 10 
Our Roman Palace, by Benjamin.. .20 
Mayor of Gasterbridge, by Hardy. .20 
Somebody s Story, bv Hu<-rh Conway, 10 

King Arthur, by Aliss Alulock 20 

Set m Diamonds, by B, AI. Clay.... 20 
Social Solutions. No. 3. by Howland. 10 
A Modern Alidas, by Alaurice Jokai.20 
A Failen Idol, by F. xVnstey 20 


756 Conspiracy, by Adam Badean 25 

757 Doris’ Fortune, by F. Warden. ... 10 

758 Cynic Forenne, by D. C. Murray... 10 

759 Foul Play, by Chas. Reade 20 

760 Fair Women, by Mrs. Furre-ter . . . .20 

761 Count of Alonte Cristo, Part I., by 

Alexandre Dumas 20 

761 Count of Alonte Cristo, Part II., by 

Alexandre Dumas 20 

762 Social Solutions, No. 4, b^ Howland. 10 

763 Moths, by Ouida .20 

764 A Fair Alystery, by Berthri AI. Clay.20 

765 Social Solutions, No. 5. by Howland, 10 

766 Vixen, by Miss Braddcn 20 

767 Kidnapped, by R. L. Stevenson.. . .20 

768 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and 

Mr. Hyde, by R. L. Stevenson. . lO 

769 Prince Otto, by R. L. Stevenson. . .10 

770 The Dynamiter, by R. L. Stevenson. 20 

771 The Old Mam’selle's Secret, by E. 

Marlitt 20 

772 Atysteries of Paris, Part I., by Sue.20 

772 Mysteries of Paris, Part II., by Sue.20 

773 Put Your.self in His Place, by Reaiie 20 

774 Social Solutions, No. 6, by Howland. 10 

775 The Three Guardsmen, byDumas.20 

776 The Wandering Jew, Fart I., by Sue. 20 

776 The Wandering Jew. Part II., b\ Sue.20 

777 A Second Life, by Airs. Alexander.20 

778 Social Solutions, No. 7. by Howland. 10 

779 Aly Friend Jim, by W. E. Norris.. 10 

7>0 Bad to Beat, by Hawley Smait 10 

781 Betty’s V'isions, by Broughton 15 

7^2 Social Solutions. No. 8, by Howland.lO 

783 The Octoroon, by Miss Bracldon — 20 

784 Les AlLerables, Part I., by Hugo. .20 
784 Les Miscrables, Part II., by Hugo. 20 

784 LesAIiserables, Part 111., by Hugo. 20 

785 Social Solutions, No. 9, by Hovi land. 10 

786 Twenty Years After, by Dumas .... 20 

787 A Wicked Girl, by Mai*y Cecil Hay .10 

788 Social Solution':, No. 10. by Howland.lO 

789 Charles O’AIallcy, l*’t I , by Lever. 20 
7S9 Charles O’Malley, P‘t II., by Lever. 20 

790 Othmar, by Ouida 20 

7’U SocialSolutions,No.ll.by Howland.lO 

792 Her Week’s Amusement, by ‘‘The 

Duchess*’.. 10 

793 New Arabian Nights, by Stevenson. 20 

794 Tom Burke of Ours, 1^'t I , by Lcver.20 

791 Tom Burke of Ours, Pt II., by lever. 20 

795 Social Solut ons. No 12, bvHowland.lO 

796 Property in Land, by Henry Georg '. 15 

797 A Phantom Lover, by Vernon Lee. 10 

798 3‘he Prince of the Hundred Soups, 

bv Vornon Lee - lO 

799 AJaid, Wife, or V/idow? by Airs. 

Alexander 10 

SOO Th rns and Orange Blossoms, by 
B. AI. Clay 10 

801 Romance of a Black A’'eil, by Clay.lO 

802 Lady Val worth’s Diamonds 10 

803 Love’s Warfare, by B. AI. Clay ... .10 

804 Madolin's Lover, by B. M, Clay , . . .20 


Any of the above can be obtained from all booksellers and newsdealers, or will be 
sent free by mail, on receipt of price, by the publishers. 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY, 

Nos. 14 AND 16 Vesey Street, New York. 


j or honnehouches chosen from the wisest and wit~ 

I tiest words that find their way into print about dU 
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